THE  PUBLISHER 


THE   PUBLISHER 


BY 


Robert  Sterling  Yard 


BOSTON    AND    NEW    YORK 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 

(arbe  RibECjSttic  prcfjS  Cambritige 


COPYRIGHT,    I9I3,    BY    ROBERT   STERLING   Y'ARD 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  September  iqij 


TO  MY  WIFE 

WHOSE  DEVOTION  HAS  BEEN  MY 
INSPIRATION,  WHOSE  FAITH  HAS 
BEEN  MY  FORTRESS  OF  DEFENSE 


268683 


CONTENTS 

I.   "The    Worst     Business    in    the 

World" i 

II.   What  makes  a  Book  Sell  •       •       •     37 

III.  A  Dollar  Down  and  a  Dollar  a 

Minute 87 

IV.  Publisher,  Author,  and  the  Devil  139 


THE   WORST  BUSINESS 
IN   THE   WORLD" 


THE  PUBLISHER 


"THE  WORST   BUSINESS 
IN   THE   WORLD" 

A  BRILLIANT  young  reader  who  had 
"picked"  a  dozen  successes  in  half  as 
many  seasons,  including  a  couple  of  "  best 
sellers,"  had  determined  to  start  in  busi- 
ness for  himself  and  was  seeking  capital. 
After  many  months  he  interested  a  couple 
of  rich  men. 

"  But  is  it  a  good  business  ?  "  they  asked. 

"Good?  I  should  say  so!"  replied  the 
enthusiastic  youngster.  "  It  is  the  most 
fascinating  thing  in  the  wide  world.  Its 
associations  are  nothing  short  of  noble, 
and  its  problems  call  for  the  best  that 
the  shrewdest  and  most  cultivated  man 
has  in  him.  The  man  who  deals  in  fabrics 


THE   PUBLISHER 

or  foodstuffs  works  all  day,  so  that  he 
may  live  evenings  and  holida3-s;  but  the 
publisher  lives  —  really  lives  —  in  the 
highest  sense  of  the  word,  in  his  work 
day  by  day.  Why  —  " 

"But,"  interrupted  his  capitalists, 
"that's  your  part  of  it,  and  we  don't 
wonder  that  you  love  the  business;  but 
where  do  we  come  in?  What  chance 
have  we  to  earn  twenty  per  cent  on  our 
investment?  for  we  must  have  a  bait  as 
good  as  that  to  tempt  us  to  undertake 
the  risks  of  starting  a  brand-new  enter- 
prise." 

"Well,"  said  the  young  publisher,  "I 
can  satisfy  you  there.  Mr.  Smith  takes 
eighty-five  thousand  a  year  out  of  his 
business  in  dividends,  besides  his  salary, 
which  must  be  handsome.  Mr.  Jones  has 
built  up  in  ten  years  a  business  of  a  mil- 
lion and  a  half  a  3'ear.  Mr.  Robinson  does 
a  business  of  four  millions  a  year.  Mr. 
Jackson  has  built  up  a  business  of  four 
hundred  thousand  in  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
4 


THE   WORST   BUSIN'ESS 

tury  which  is  said  to  net  a  hundred  thou- 
sand a  year.  I  don't  know  any  publisher 
of  any  account  at  all  who  is  n't  prosper- 
ous—  except  a  couple  of  very  conspicu- 
ous houses  which  came  to  grief  by  bad 
management  in  their  second  generations; 
but  they  were  very  prosperous  under 
their  founders  and  doubtless  will  be  again, 
with  their  fine  lists.  Why  don't  you  ask 
the  publishers  themselves?" 

The  capitalists  did  so. 

"  General  book-publishing  ?  "  asked  Mr. 
Smith.  "Financially  speaking,  it's  the 
poorest  business  in  the  world." 

"  Well,"  said  Mr.  Jones  reflectively,  "  if 
you  've  got  hold  of  a  genius,  go  ahead. 
Every  publishing  business  needs  a  genius. 
But  why  don't  you  try  mining  stocks?" 

"  Get  big  bulk  and  you  '11  make  money," 
said  Mr.  Robinson,  "  provided  you  don't 
lose  your  boots  trying  to  get  your  bulk. 
Pare  expenses  to  the  half-cent  and  never 
pay  a  twelve-hundred-dollar  salary  if  you 
can  hire  for  a  thousand.  Be  your  own 
5 


THE   PUBLISHER 

axeman,  so  you  '11  be  sure.  Otherwise 
there  's  nothing  in  books." 

"  Trade  books  alone  ? "  asked  Mr.  Jack- 
son. "  It 's  the  worst  business  in  the  world. 
I  hope  you  've  got  hogsheads  of  money. 
Better  go  into  textbooks.  Fiction,  did 
you  say?  Yes,  there's  money  made  in 
novels,  they  tell  me.  So  there  is  in  cop- 
per. I  've  heard  of  fortunes  made  in 
copper.  But  then,  I  'm  no  speculator.  If 
I  were  I  think  I  'd  prefer  copper." 

Yet  these  men  were  all  successful. 

However,  let  us  consider  them  indi- 
vidually. 

Mr.  Smith  is  a  distinguished  general 
publisher,  but  he  also  owns  a  highly 
profitable  magazine,  a  highly  profitable 
schoolbook  business,  a  highly  profitable 
subscription  business,  a  retail  business, 
a  rare-book  business,  and  several  other 
minor  businesses  in  books  built  up  around 
his  central  publishing  business  and  sup- 
porting it  like  chapels  around  the  cathe- 
dral choir,  each  dovetailed  into  each  other 
6 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

and  into  the  central  core,  making  a  busi- 
ness edifice  beautiful  in  proportions  and 
a  fortress  for  strength. 

And  Mr.  Jones's  general  publishing 
business  is  supported  by  three  handsomely 
profitable  magazines,  besides  a  score  of 
minor  undertakings  which  make,  all  to- 
gether, for  huge,  aggressive  power.  Be- 
sides which,  Mr.  Jones  is  himself  his  own 
business  genius  —  a  great  merchant  who 
would  have  wrung  wealth  and  power  out 
of  any  business  he  had  chanced  into. 

And  Mr.  Robinson  inherited  a  great 
business,  founded  in  simpler  days  upon 
a  great  English  publishing  house,  and 
to-day  consisting  of  a  union  of  general 
publishing  with  importing  and  textbook 
publishing  on  a  large  scale  —  the  whole 
driven  forward  by  a  will  of  steel  on  a 
scale  of  expense  so  low  as  to  be  the  won- 
der even  of  the  publishing  world. 

And  Mr.  Jackson's  is  not  a  general  pub- 
lishing business  at  all,  though  most  folks 
think  it  is,  but  a  highly  specialized  and 
7 


THE   PUBLISHER 

developed  business  in  higher  textbooks, 
assisting  and  assisted  by  a  general  pub- 
lishing department  which,  thus  assisted, 
is  profitable  because  of  its  quality  and  be- 
cause of  the  careful  skill  with  which  it  is 
handled. 

The  point  becomes  as  clear  as  sunshine. 

The  "worst  business  in  the  world" 
becomes  one  of  the  best  in  the  world 
when  it  is  propped  up  on  every  side  by 
specialized  departments  sucking  in  profit 
from  outlying  markets ;  or  when  it  is  com- 
bined with  periodical  publication,  each 
department  materially  assisting  the  other. 
It  is  naturally  the  hub  of  an}-  publishing 
combination  in  which  it  appears;  and,  the 
nearer  perfect  the  surrounding  wheel,  the 
greater  the  possible  speed. 

There  are  general  publishing  houses, 
however,  which  stand  successfully  all  by 
themselves.  This  means  bulk  business, 
and  bulk  business  means  one  of  two 
things  —  either  many  years  of  patient  and 
discriminating  list-building,  with  ample 
8 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

capital  to  build  with;  or  the  same  result 
accomplished  more  quickly  by  the  acqui- 
sition of  the  lists  of  other  houses  which, 
for  some  reason  or  other  —  generally  lack 
of  profits  —  elect  to  drop  out  of  activity. 

Houghton  Mifflin  Company  is  the  best 
American  example  of  the  house  which 
has  acquired  great  bulk  through  slow 
building.  Its  list  goes  back  to  the  begin- 
ning of  New  England  literature  and  its 
catalogue  to-day  contains  the  lifework  of 
the  most  celebrated  of  the  earlier  Ameri- 
can writers.  This  magnificent  list,  the  ac- 
cumulation of  generations,  alone  would 
support  a  great  house  to-day  without  the 
flourishing  educational  and  subscription 
departments  which  have  been  added  in 
recent  years. 

Another  Boston  house,  Little,  Brown 
&  Company,  is  as  good  an  example  as 
any  of  the  other  manner  of  bulk-getting. 
Starting  with  an  old  and  excellent  busi- 
ness in  lawbooks,  the  house  never  at- 
tained real  success  in  general  publishing 
9 


THE   PUBLISHER 

until  it  acquired  the  fine  list  which  it  be- 
came possible  to  purchase  when  Roberts 
Brothers,  of  Boston,  decided  that  there 
was  not  enough  money  in  publishing  to 
tempt  them  to  go  any  further.  With  this 
valuable  addition,  the  house  has  ever 
since  built  aggressively  and  profitably. 
,  Speaking  generally,  it  may  be  said  to 
require  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand dollars  gross  receipts  yearly  to  sup- 
port the  simplest  general  publishing  busi- 
ness, unaided  by  special  departments  in 
other  publishing  fields;  at  two  hundred 
thousand  dollars  there  will  be  profit,  and 
at  four  hundred  thousand  prosperity.    „ 

These  figures  —  even  the  minimum  — 
are  not  so  easy  to  get,  however.  The  new 
publisher  finds  he  must  sell  a  great  many 
books  to  aggregate  even  a  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  dollars;  and,  unless  a 
goodly  proportion  of  the  income  repre- 
sents "  list"  —  that  is,  formerl}'  published 
books  which  have  already  paid  back  their 
cost  of  publication  and  now  are  selling 

lO 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

well  on  a  basis  of  real  profit  —  he  can't 
expect  to  break  even. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  publish- 
ers in  America  maintained  for  years  that 
he  did  not  want  "best  sellers." 

"They  are  too  expensive,"  he  said.  "I 
can't  afford  them." 

When  I  seriously  challenged  him  one 
day  to  prove  his  assertion,  he  said :  — 

"It  is  easily  proved.  Here  —  let  us  make 
some  figures.  Let  us  assume  a  novel  of 
four  hundred  pages,  illustrated  with  draw- 
ings by  one  of  the  high-priced  illustrators. 
Let  us  assume  that  it  eventually  sells  one 
hundred  thousand  copies  and  that  our 
first  edition  was  ten  thousand.  It  will 
figure  up  something  like  this:  — 

Five  original  drawings,  at  $150  .  .  .  $  750 
Composition  and  plates,  at  $1  a  page  .      .       400 

Cover  dies 25 

Paper  for  10,000  copies 500 

Printing  text  and  illustrations      ....        300 

Binding  10,000,  at  1 1  cents iioo 

Total $3075 

Or  thirty  and  three  quarter  cents  a  book. 
II 


THE   PUBLISHER 

"  Succeeding  printings  will  cost,  at  the 
same  rate,  —  less,  of  course,  the  first  costs, 
drawings,  plates  and  dies,  —  nineteen 
cents  a  book;  or  an  average  of  twenty 
and  one  tenth  cents  a  book  for  the  total 
sale.  The  showing  then  will  be:  — 

Cost  of  manufacture $0,201 

Author's  royalty,  at  20  per  cent  of  price, 

$1.50 30 

Cost  of  doing  business,   28    per  cent  of 

income 224 

Special  advertising  campaign 05 

$0^75 
Deducted  from  average  price  received    .        .So 

Leaves  average  net  profit  on  each  book  .   $0,025 

"If  the  'best  seller'  scores  a  hundred 
thousand  in  the  course  of  its  run  —  say, 
two  3'ears  —  the  total  net  profit  will  be 
twenty-five  hundred  dollars.  I  'm  quite 
aware  that  most  persons  believe  that  the 
publisher  gets  many  times  that  profit  out 
of  it;  but  these  are  the  facts.  To  get  the 
author's  returns,  of  course,  you  have  only 
to  multiply  the  total  sale  by  the  royalty. 
12 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

In  the  above  instance  it  would  be  thirty 
thousand  dollars." 

*'  So  you  see  there  's  no  profit  in  it  for 
us  —  and  what 's  the  use  ?  Besides  yield- 
ing no  profit,  it  actually  hogs  the  whole 
attention  of  the  house  to  the  exclusion  of 
the  other  and  reall}'  important  books  — 
the  books  that,  bulked  together,  really 
make  profit,  and  the  books  that  carry  the 
dignity  and  the  prestige  and  the  power 
and  the  influence  of  the  house.  It  eclipses 
them  all.  Salesmen  strive  to  land  quanti- 
ties of  the  best  seller  because  it  is  a  showy 
business  and  everybody 's  talking  about 
it.  Every  one  in  the  house  runs  about  re- 
porting the  last  sale  of  twenty-five  hun- 
dred copies  just  in  by  wire.  The  adver- 
tising man  puts  the  wretched  thing  at  the 
top  of  every  ad,  and  grows  scornful  of 
the  lesser  sellers  that  constitute  our  real 
power.  What  do  they  care  that  the  big 
sale  brings  no  profit  .f*  The  cornet  screams 
and  the  crowd  chuck  up  their  hats!  The 
lust  of  record-making  has  the  whole  es- 
13 


THE   PUBLISHER 

tablishment  by  the  throat;  we  have  ceased 
to  be  a  serious  business  house  in  our  wild 
rush  for  the  top  of  the  'best  sellers '  list  in 
the  Saturday  papers.  No  more  for  me." 

Now  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  was 
a  great  deal  of  solid  sense  in  this  point  of 
view,  especially  at  the  time  it  was  uttered, 
some  ten  years  or  more  ago,  just  before 
the  collapse  of  the  "craz}'  period,"  when 
publishers  of  all  degrees  were  spending 
their  profits  in  rash  advertising  under  the 
temporary  delusion  that  "  books  are  like 
everything  else;  advertise  enough  and 
they  '11  sell  any  amount." 

In  those  days,  too,  royalties  leaped  tb 
dangerous  levels.  "  Large  sales,  small 
profits,"  became  the  cry.  But,  with  the 
collapse  of  the  theory  that  advertising 
could  be  made  to  sell  anything,  twenty 
per  cent  once  more  looked  very  large  to 
publishers.  To-day  it  is  again  the  maxi- 
mum royalty  under  which  publishers  can 
do  business  at  all,  and  therefore  to  be 
considered  only  after  goodly  thousands 


THE  WORST   BUSINESS 

have  been  marketed  at  fifteen  per  cent 
to  give  the  publisher  a  chance  to  turn 
around  with  his  advertising.  Beginners' 
novels  should  always  start  at  ten  per  cent 
or  less. 

Since  then  conditions  have  been  much 
bettered,  as  we  shall  see;  but  even  be- 
fore the  betterment  the  publisher  quoted 
greatly  modified  his  point  of  view.  He 
found  that,  even  without  profit,  a  large 
seller  is  a  mighty  good  thing  to  possess. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  the  best  possible 
"  trade  leader."  The  salesman  who  has  a 
heavy  selling  novel  on  his  list  is  eagerly 
greeted  in  every  bookshop  and  finds  it 
much  easier  to  sell  down  his  whole  list 
than  if  he  had  no  big  specialty  to  make  him 
welcome.  I  have  heard  salesmen  value 
this  as  high  as  twenty  per  cent,  meaning 
that  the  big  seller  at  the  top  would  tend 
to  increase  the  sales  of  the  rest  of  the  list 
by  that  large  proportion.  The  constant  re- 
ordering of  the  big  seller  by  mail  and  ex- 
press by  every  bookshop,  big  and  little, 
15 


THE   PUBLISHER 

in  the  countr}^  keeps  the  house  that  pub- 
lishes it  and  that  house's  whole  list  con- 
stantly and  profitably  before  the  attention 
of  the  trade. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  the  best  kind 
of  an  "  author  getter."  There  is  at  least 
one  author  on  your  list  who  is  receiving 
handsome  royalties  and  who  consequently 
is  sounding  your  praises  wisely  and  con- 
tinuously. Authors  of  novels  besiege  the 
offices  of  the  publishers  of  a  "best  seller" 
under  the  impression  that  he  possesses 
some  occult  power  to  make  novels  sell ;  at 
worst,  they  see  his  advertising  and  speak 
of  him  admiringly  as  "  a  heavy  advertiser,*" 
which  is  a  profitable  reputation  to  possess. 
Successful  authors  of  all  kinds  of  books 
are  the  easier  of  approach. 

I  have  said  that  profit  conditions  are 
better  now  than  ten  years  ago;  but  some 
of  the  conditions  are  worse.  Paper,  print- 
ing, and  binding  all  cost  more  now  than 
then.  On  the  other  hand,  competition  in 
advertising  has  ceased,  publishers  having 
i6 


THE   WORST  BUSINESS 

learned  by  costly  experience  that  there  is 
nothing  in  it  to  gain  and  all  to  lose,  and 
that  the  old  publishing  fact  that  each  book 
has  its  own  natural  limit  of  sale,  beyond 
which  it  can  be  advanced  by  advertising 
only  at  a  loss,  is  as  much  a  fact  about  fic- 
tion as  about  any  other  kind  of  book. 
Book-advertising,  at  its  height  ten  years 
ago,  has  rapidly  lessened,  until  now  it 
probably  represents  as  nearly  actual  value 
as  will  ever  be  realized. 

The  advance  of  several  years  ago  in  the 
prices  of  fiction  does  not  help  the  pub- 
lisher. That  is  the  bookseller's  profit, 
though  it  was  the  publisher  who  brought 
it  to  pass. 

Perhaps  you  did  not  know  there  had 
been  an  advance  in  the  price  of  novels! 

Perhaps  3'ou  became  so  used  to  ad- 
vances in  the  prices  of  everything  that 
you  never  even  noticed  that  your  novels 
had  gone  up  twenty-five  per  cent! 

No  one  can  blame  you,  of  course;  for 
naturally  you  would  have  been  more 
17 


THE   PUBLISHER 

likely  to  notice  it  if  the  price  had  n't 
gone  up! 

Anyway,  it  used  to  be  that  publishers 
published  the  standard  novel  at  a  dollar 
and  a  half  and  booksellers  sold  it  at  a  dol- 
lar and  eight  cents.  Now  publishers  pub- 
lish it  at  a  dollar  and  thirty-five  cents  net 
and  booksellers  maintain  that  price;  but 
there  is  no  perceptible  increase  in  the 
price  the  bookseller  pays  the  publisher 
for  it. 

It  happened  this  way:  Booksellers  were 
not  making  enough  out  of  fiction  to  make 
it  worth  their  while  to  feature  it,  particu- 
larly as  certain  cut-rate  department  stores 
often  sold  novels  at  an  actual  cash  loss 
for  the  sake  of  the  advertisement,  hoping 
to  draw  customers  for  other  departments. 
The  publishers  saw  the  natural  retail  out- 
lets for  their  books  threatened  with  actual 
obliteration  by  this  destructive  competi- 
tion, and  some  years  ago  they  com- 
bined to  maintain  prices  for  one  year  after 
publication,  refusing  to  sell  to  those  who 
i8 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

would  not  agree  to  do  so.  The  cut-rate 
department  stores  shouted  "Trust,"  and 
a  five  years'  war  began,  which  ended  in 
the  defeat  of  the  publishers  in  the  courts, 
but  the  sound  establishment  in  practice  of 
the  business  principle  of  price  mainte- 
nance. The  combination,  of  course,  went 
permanently  out  of  existence;  but  the  re- 
tail trade,  including  the  vast  majority  of 
the  largest  and  soundest  department  stores 
in  the  country,  no  longer  troubles  itself 
about  those  cut-rate  shops.  They  may  cut 
all  they  please  and  charge  their  losses 
to  advertising;  but  they  no  longer  affect 
the  main  current  of  the  country's  book 
business. 

There  still  remained,  however,  too  little 
profit  in  novels  to  tempt  the  bookseller 
to  do  more  than  keep  a  few  on  his  coun- 
ter. Something  had  to  be  done  to  spur  him 
to  real  effort.  "More  profit!"  he  cried. 
"  Put  fiction  on  the  net  basis,  as  other 
books." 

And  so  it  came  about. 
19 


THE   PUBLISHER 

However,  there  was  no  combination  of 
publishers  now;  nor  could  there  be.  The 
experiment  must  be  made  by  individuals; 
and  by  and  by  one  big  house  tried  a  book 
or  two  at  a  dollar  and  thirty-five  cents 
net,  that  word  "net"  meaning  that  the 
published  price  was  to  be  maintained  for 
a  year.  It  "went"  all  right.  There  was 
no  complaint  from  the  public  and  no 
dropping  off  in  sales.  Other  publishers 
tried  the  experiment,  and  it  was  found 
that  some  of  the  higher-priced  novels 
outsold  with  ease  the  old-priced  novels 
lying  alongside  them  on  the  same  counter. 
Purchasers  seemed  to  buy  what  they 
wanted,  irrespective  of  price. 

Would  it  retard  a  big  seller  ?  That 
finally  became  the  question. 

Houghton  Mifflin  Company,  one  of  the 
boldest  experimenters  in  the  new  system, 
ventured  a  big  historical  novel  at  a  dol- 
lar and  forty  cents  net.  Some  publishers 
thought  they  were  taking  great  chances. 

The  public  did  not  think  so,  however. 
20 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

The  novel  bounded  into  first  place  from 
the  start.  It  scored  its  first  hundred  thou- 
sand on  its  first  wind.  The  "net  novel" 
was  established.  The  price  of  fiction  was 
definitely  and  permanently  raised.  With- 
in two  years  every  publisher  swung  into 
line  and  almost  every  novel  is  now  put 
out  at  the  net  price. 

Though  the  bookseller  gets  practically 
all  the  increase  from  this  advance  in  price, 
there  is  a  slight  saving  to  the  publisher 
in  royalty,  which  makes  an  appreciable 
difference  to  him.  Nor  does  the  author 
lose  anything  in  the  end,  because  fiction 
has  become  really  profitable  to  the  book- 
seller, at  last  —  it  really  wasn't  before 
—  and  he  actually  sells  a  great  many  more 
copies  than  he  used  to  under  the  old 
system. 

Another  new  source  of  profit  is  the 
business  in  cheap  editions  that  has  grown 
up  within  the  last  dozen  years.  There  are 
houses  whose  whole  business  is  to  get  a 
secondary  sale  of  novels,  and  a  fifty-cent 

21 


THE   PUBLISHER 

retail  price,  which  have  made  real  suc- 
cesses at  the  higher  price. 

The  publisher  of  the  successful  novel, 
two  years  after  it  first  appears  on  the 
market,  makes  his  deal  with  the  cheap- 
edition  man,  loaning  him  the  plates  for  a 
royalty  of  ten  cents  for  each  book  printed 
from  them.  Of  this,  five  cents  goes  to  the 
author  in  lieu  of  royalty.  The  cheap- 
edition  man  prints  in  large  editions,  using 
the  cheapest  possible  paper  and  a  greatly 
cheapened  binding.  Editions  of  twenty- 
five  thousand  cost  him,  say,  fifteen  cents 
a  book  to  manufacture,  or,  including  his 
ten  cents  to  the  publisher,  twenty-five' 
cents  a  book.  He  sells  chiefly  to  depart- 
ment stores  at  thirty-five  cents,  making 
a  profit  of  ten  cents  for  himself.  The  de- 
partment store  sells  to  the  public  at  forty- 
five  or  fifty  cents.  Regular  bookshops 
often  handle  these  books  in  large  num- 
bers also,  and  it  frequently  happens  that 
you  can  buy  at  the  same  counter  two  dif- 
ferent editions  of  the  same  famous   old 

22 


THE  WORST  BUSINESS 

novel  —  both  well  printed  from  the  same 
plates — one  for  fifty  cents  and  the  other 
for  a  dollar  eight. 

Curiously,  the  advent  of  the  cheap  edi- 
tion two  or  more  years  after  original  publi- 
cation does  not  very  greatly  affect  the  con- 
tinued sale  of  the  original  higher-priced 
edition.  They  sell  together  for  years. 

To-day,  therefore,  the  publisher's  final 
figures  for  a  "best  seller"  of  one  hundred 
thousand  initial  circulation  would  look 
something  like  this:  — 

Cost  of  manufacture $0,221 

Royalty,  at  20  per  cent .270 

Cost  of  doing  business,  28  per  cent  of  in- 
come    ,224 

Deduct  from  average  price  received         .Soo 
Leaves  average  net  profit  on  each 

book $0,085 

Net  profit  on  100,000  sold $8,500 

Cheap  edition,  50,000  copies  at  5  cents 
a   book,  less   28  per  cent  for  cost  of 

doing  business 1,800 

Total  net  profit $10,300 


23 


THE   PUBLISHER 

Which  is  a  good  deal  better  than  in  the 
middle  of  the  "crazy  period"  when, from 
their  advertising,  the  public  had  a  right 
to  think  that  publishers  were  making  real 
fortunes. 

It  is  interesting,  by  the  way,  to  compare 
the  publisher's  earnings  with  those  of  the 
author,  which,  in  this  instance,  including 
the  return  from  the  cheap  edition,  would 
be  twent3^-nine  thousand  five  hundred 
dollars.  This  is  gross,  of  course;  but,  as- 
suming that  it  took  a  year  for  the  author 
to  write  the  novel  and  that  his  living  ex- 
penses for  the  period  were  five  thousand 
dollars,  you  have  as  his  net  profit  twenty-' 
four  thousand  five  hundred  dollars.  Not 
bad,  is  it? 

For  your  modern  novelist,  be  it  noted 
right  here, — I  meanyour  successful  novel- 
ist,—  is  really  a  magnate  compared  with 
his  publisher.  One  popular  novelist  re- 
ceives twenty  thousand  dollars  from  a 
magazine  for  the  serial  rights  of  a  new 
novel,  and  his  book  publisher  afterward 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

sells  something  between  one  and  two  hun- 
dred thousand  copies  at  full  price  and  full 
royalty,  and  possibly  a  hundred  thousand 
of  the  cheap  edition  at  five  cents  royalty. 
You  can  calculate  for  3'ourself  what  one 
novel  —  say,  every  other  year — probably 
brings  him.  As  for  the  myriad  novelists 
of  lesser  degree  —  but  all  that  is  quite 
"another  story." 

You  will  also  note,  of  course,  that  I 
have  made  in  the  above  table  no  allow- 
ance for  special  advertising,  the  "Cost  of 
doing  business  "  item  being  now  supposed 
to  cover  a  normal  and  sufficient  advertise- 
ment of  the  book.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
some  publishers  still  cannot  wholly  re- 
sist the  undue  "lure  of  the  ad,"  and  run 
their  costs  higher  than  the  ideal  percent- 
age I  have  used  in  the  illustration.  To 
offset  this,  the  manufacturing  item  can 
be  considerably  reduced  by  leaving  out 
illustrations  and  cheapening  paper  and 
binding. 

_  "What  a  stunning  business ! "  exclaims 
25 


THE   PUBLISHER 

a  young  man,  looking  over  my  shoulder 
at  this  point.  "I  'd  no  idea  publishing  was 
so  profitable!  Haifa  dozen  novels  is  all 
you  need,  is  n't  it?" 

Half  a  dozen  best  sellers — yes;  but  a 
sale  of  five  thousand  is  a  successful  sale, 
as  novels  go,  while  one  of  ten  thousand 
is  an  excellent  success. 

The  vast  majority  of  novels,  however, 
which  enter  the  market  heavily  freighted 
with  authors'  and  publishers'  hopes,  are 
fortunate  if  they  sell  two  or  three  thou- 
sand each  and  return  their  cash  invest- 
ment without  interest.  Several  years  ago 
I  counted  nineteen  new  novels  on  the 
spring  list  of  a  conspicuous  publisher  and 
at  Christmas  learned  that  only  one  of 
them  had  sold  out  its  first  slender  edition. 
Think  of  the  capital  tied  up  in  that  losing 
bunch!  That  is  the  other  side  of  this 
fiction  business. 

Those  houses  that  make  a  success  of 
fiction  do  so  after  long  study  and  the 
most  careful  development  of  their  oppor- 
26 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

tunities.  The  Century  Company's  amaz- 
ingly popular  dollar  series,  beginning 
with  "  Mrs.  Wiggs  "  and  running  down 
through  "  The  Lady  of  the  Decoration," 
"  Uncle  William,"  and  others  to  "  Molly 
Make-Believe,"  is  the  result  of  the  most 
careful  and  thoughtful  study  of  the  first 
chance  success.  And  publishers  gener- 
ally, by  patient  selection  and  develop- 
ment, gather  together  in  the  years  small 
groups  of  highly  popular  novelists,  round 
whose  books  they  group  the  lesser  sellers 
and  the  great  mob  of  new  writers  they 
hope  —  quite  as  ardently  as  the  writers 
themselves — will  develop  some  day  from 
experiments,  more  or  less  costly,  into 
money-makers  —  and,  mayhap,  some  of 
them  good  sellers. 

And  this  is  the  fiction  business  —  ab- 
sorbingly interesting,  exciting  enough, 
very  highly  speculative  and,  at  its  best 
and  as  a  whole,  not  very  profitable.  In 
view  of  which,  those  "Book  Trust" 
advertisements  of  the  cut-price  depart- 
27 


THE   PUBLISHER 

ment  stores,  attacking  publishers  as 
*'  Fiction  Barons,"  are  funny,  are  n't  they? 

Where,  then,  you  ask,  is  the  money  in 
publishing?  Since  those  glittering  best 
sellers  that  fill  the  public  eye  and  furnish 
the  public  tongue  with  book  patter  are 
not  the  publishers'  great  prizes,  what,  in 
the  name  of  Midas,  are? 

The  so-called  "  list"  books,  however, 
are  the  heavy  infantry,  the  heavy  artillery 
—  the  main  body  of  the  publishing  army. 
Here  is  headquarters.  Here  is  where  and 
how  the  publisher  lives.  Though  some 
novels  and  occasional  gift  books  pass  into 
the  backlog  class  by  reason  of  staying 
qualities  not  possessed  by  the  class  in 
general,  the  vast  majority  are  books  of  se- 
rious purpose  —  biography,  history,  phi- 
losoph3%  nature,  literature,  sport,  educa- 
tion—  the  whole  realm  of  human  thought. 

Books  of  this  kind  are  highly  prized 
for  several  reasons.  First,  you  can  de- 
pend upon  their  profitable  sale,  even 
though  it  is  scattered  over  ten  or  twenty 
28 


THE  WORST   BUSINESS 

years.  Second,  there  being  less  risk  than 
with  fiction,  you  are  not  obliged  to  give 
the  bookseller  unnatural  discounts.  Third, 
there  being  little  chance  of  a  rapid  sale, 
you  do  not  have  other  publishers  compet- 
ing with  you  in  royalties.  "  Royalties  ex- 
ceeding ten  per  cent  are  immoral,"  Henry 
Holt  is  reported  to  have  said.  Fourth, 
experience  having  shown  that  in  some  in- 
explicable way  every  book  will  in  time 
reach  its  normal  audience,  there  is  no 
need  of  advertising  campaigns.  A  few  an- 
nouncements in  certain  magazines  and 
newspapers  sought  for  the  purpose  by 
people  who  purchase  and  read  books 
habitually  and  who  can  be  trusted  to 
spread  their  fame  among  their  own  kind 
and  near-kind,  together  with  a  little  judi- 
cious circularizing  over  selected  lists,  are 
all  that  is  necessary  or  safe.  Advertising 
pressure  will  bring  the  same  results 
quicker,  of  course,  but  usually  at  the  ex- 
pense of  profits.  Fifth,  the  price  need  not 
be  held  down  to  an  obligatory  standard, 
29 


THE   PUBLISHER 

as  in  fiction.  The  publisher  must  sell  his 
six-hundred-page  novel  at  the  same  price 
as  he  sells  his  three-hundred-and-fifty- 
page  novel,  and  illustrations  are  added 
at  his  own  cost;  but  the  price  of  the  seri- 
ous book  is  regulated  by  its  cost,  so  that 
a  fair  margin  of  profit  may  always  be 
assured. 

A  four  -  to  -  five  -  hundred  -  octavo  -  page 
book  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  for  instance, 
bulked  by  fairly  heavy  paper,  will  score 
its  natural  sale  of  three  or  four  thousand 
copies  at  two  dollars  and  fifty  cents  net, 
with  a  gross  profit  over  manufacture  and 
royalty  of,  more  or  less,  a  dollar  a  book; 
while  a  novel  of  the  same  length  will  run 
a  hundred  pages  more,  will  cost  more  for 
binding,  will  be  illustrated,  will  pay  a 
larger  trade  discount,  will  cost  more  to 
advertise,  and  will  carry  a  retail  price  of 
only  one  dollar  and  thirty-five  cents.  The 
one  is  sure;  the  other  a  speculation. 

The  mystery  remains  a  mystery  of  sorts 
even  after  it  is  elucidated,  for  the  pub- 
30 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

Ushers'  prizes  are  books  you  have  scarcely 
or  never  heard  of.  They  include,  for  ex- 
ample, that  book  on  shade  trees  which 
your  next-door  neighbor  bought  and  no 
one  else  in  your  whole  aquaintance,  though 
you  knew  twenty  who  bought  the  same 
publisher's  best-selling  novel ;  and  the 
book  on  the  philosophy  of  religion  to 
which  your  minister  referred  in  last  Sun- 
day's sermon  —  a  book  fourteen  years  old 
at  that;  and  the  little  book  on  right  thinking 
that  you  remember  seeing  several  years 
ago  on  Mrs.  Jones's  table;  and  the  Betty 
and  Katharine  books  —  a  whole  series  — 
which  your  little  daughter  wanted  for  her 
birthday;  and  the  book  on  winter  life  in 
India,  the  review  of  which  interested  you 
several  years  ago  and  which  you  always 
meant  to  buy;  and  the  biography  of  an 
American  woman  educator  that  your 
friend  across  the  street  was  enthusiastic 
over — hundreds, yes,  thousands,  of  books 
on  every  subject  on  earth  apparently,  and 
scarcely  a  score  of  whose  titles  you  ever 
31 


THE   PUBLISHER 

heard.  Novels?  Yes,  a  few;  but,  apart 
from  obvious  "classics,"  most  of  them  do 
not  seem  especially  prominent. 

This  is  very  puzzling,  of  course,  and 
the  explanation  brings  us  to  the  very 
heart  of  the  whole  matter.  Commercially 
speaking,  books  are  roughly  divided  into 
two  classes  —  quick  turnovers  and  back- 
log books.  The  first  class  are  gift  books, 
specialties  of  all  sorts  and  most  novels. 

They  are  the  light  horse  of  this  pub- 
lishing army —  the  skirmishers,  the  flank- 
turners,  the  supply-getters.  They  are  put 
out  to  sell  fast  and  are  usually  practically 
forgotten  after  their  first  or  second  season* 
Many  a  year's  gross  sales  are  comfortably 
filled  out  by  some  chance  hit  or  two  in 
fiction.  Many  a  slow  holiday  season  is 
saved  by  the  popularity  of  some  gift  book 
that  has  been  stuck  into  the  list  to  cover 
just  such  a  contingency. 

Sometimes  there  is  no  profit  in  the 
season's  quick  sellers,  but  at  least  they 
have  turned  over  a  good  deal  of  money, 
3^ 


THE   WORST   BUSINESS 

taken  care  of  a  good  share  of  the  costs  of 
the  business  and  kept  the  whole  line  in 
lively  action.  The  profits  of  the  successes 
have  repaid  the  losses  of  the  numerous 
failures  and  something  more.  Some  years 
several  hit  it  off  together  and  the  profit 
swells  pleasantly. 

So  it  is  on  his  list  that  the  publisher  de- 
pends, as  the  general  on  his  main  army; 
but  he  may  not  neglect  with  impunity  his 
quick  turnovers  any  more  than  the  gen- 
eral may  neglect  his  own  light-moving 
flanks.  In  the  one  case  as  in  the  other 
such  neglect  means  ruin. 

Pressing  the  suggestive  figure  a  step 
further,  how  about  the  general  —  how 
about  the  man  who  plays  this  intricate 
and  diflScult  game  against  bigger  odds 
and  amid  more  pitfalls  than  men  in  any 
other  business  probably  within  general 
recognition  ? 

Well,  if  your  publisher  is  the  real  thing 
—  if  he  is  born  to  it — he  has  the  time 
of  his  life.  His  business  is  a  business  of 
33 


THE   PUBLISHER 

littles — one  little  on  top  of  another  little 
— day  by  day,  season  by  season,  year  by 
year;  abusiness  of  infinite  detail, continual 
disappointment,  a  good  deal  of  personal 
sacrifice,  patient  waiting  and  slow,  slow 
growth.  As  I  say,  if  he  is  the  real  thing 
of  a  publisher  he  loves  it;  every  failure 
even  has  its  keen  interest,  its  extenuating 
pleasure.  He  loves  the  business  for  its 
own  sake;  and  it  is  to  him,  with  all  its 
vexations  and  annoyances  and  disappoint- 
ments, to  a  large  extent  its  own  reward. 

"Then,"  you  say,  "it  really  is  the 
*  worst  business  in  the  world,'  is  n't  it?" 

Ah!  but  it  isn't  —  to  him.  To  him  it  is 
the  only  business  in  the  world  that  is 
worth  while.  Better  "do"  in  this  than  get 
rich  in  another. 

This,  then,  is  your  real  publisher,  your 
born  publisher;  and  no  other  should  enter 
the  business,  for  no  other,  once  he  tinds 
it  out,  will  stay  in  it — or,  staying,  will 
succeed. 

It  will  take  you  only  two  or  three 
34 


THE   WORST  BUSINESS 

minutes  to  name  over  all  the  general 
publishers  in  America.  It  might  take  you 
only  two  or  three  seconds  to  name  the 
publisher  who  got  rich  out  of  general 
book-publishing  alone;  but  it  may  take 
you  two  or  three  years  —  or  forever  —  to 
discover  him.  For,  as  the  countryman  ex- 
claimed on  seeing  his  first  giraffe,  "Thar 
ain't  no  sech  critter  !'* 


II 

WHAT  MAKES   A  BOOK  SELL 


II 

WHAT  MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

"  Nevertheless,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
Blank  &  Company  can  sell  more  copies  of 
a  book  than  any  other  house  in  America." 

The  publisher  did  not  dispute  this, 
though  he  did  not  believe  it.  In  the  first 
place,  in  spite  of  her  great  faith  in  the  sell- 
ing ability  of  this  other  house,  he  had  se- 
cured on  other  grounds  this  celebrated 
lady's  next  book,  with  the  prospect  of 
more  to  follow,  and  he  did  not  have  to 
argue;  in  the  second  place,  decent  pub- 
lishers do  not  compete  by  running  down 
each  other's  abilities. 

"There's  not  so  much  in  this  selling 
business  as  you  think,"  he  said  diplomat- 
ically as  he  patted  affectionately  the  signed 
contract  between  them  on  the  table.  "  You 
do  not  do  justice  to  your  own  vogue." 
39 


THE   PUBLISHER 

This  was  a  red-letter  day.  While  they 
were  still  talking,  another,  a  recent  ce- 
lebrity, called  him  on  the  telephone  and 
asked  for  an  appointment.  When  they 
met,  the  author  said:  — 

"  Yes,  I  'm  leaving  Dash  &  Company. 
Of  course  they  have  done  very  well  with 
my  novel,  but  I  am  satisfied  that  they 
should  have  done  better.  I  want  to  come 
over  to  you." 

"  Why  do  you  think  they  should  have 
done  better?"  asked  the  publisher.  "I 
thought  your  last  sold  finely  for  a  second 
novel.  We  have  all  been  congratulating 
Dash.  It  is  generally  thought  among  pub,- 
lishers  that  he  handled  your  book  well." 

"  I  don't  see  how  you  can  say  that  when 
he  did  n't  advertise  more,"  said  the  au- 
thor; "I  simply  pleaded  with  the  man,  but 
it  was  no  use.  The  newspapers  were  full 
of  book  advertising,  but  mighty  little  of 
my  book.  I  am  sure  that,  if  he  had  adver- 
tised properly,  he  could  have  put  it  to  a 
hundred  thousand.  Now  you  really  adver- 
40 


WHAT   MAKES  A  BOOK   SELL 

tise.  I  see  your  big  black-faced  three  col- 
umn announcements  everywhere.  So  I'm 
leaving  him  and  coming  to  you.  In  spite 
of  common  belief  to  the  contrary,  an  au- 
thor can  also  be  a  man  of  business,  and 
I  'm  a  man  of  business." 

The  publisher  shrugged  his  shoulders 
as  he  instructed  his  secretary  about  the 
terms  of  the  contract.  His  duty  was  fully 
done.  He  had  sufficiently  defended  Dash 
&  Company  and  his  defense  had  not 
driven  the  novelist  back  to  their  office. 
His  conscience  was  clear.  It  only  re- 
mained to  accept  what  the  gods  gave 
him.  It  was  with  a  cheerful  smile  that  he 
blotted  the  author's  signature. 

Yet  this  publisher  was  far  from  being 
a  larger  advertiser  than  Dash  &  Com- 
pany; in  fact  he  was  a  smaller  one.  But 
he  was  a  shrewder  man.  He  used  few  of 
the  magazines  and  obscurer  advertising 
mediums  so  effective  for  solid  books,  in 
which  Dash's  advertisements  appeared 
the  year  around;  and  he  did  not  believe 
41 


THE   PUBLISHER 

in  circularizing.  He  depended  largely 
upon  his  books  to  "  sell  themselves."  But 
he  perceived  that  several  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year  cunningly  displayed  in  certain 
newspapers  would  create  a  public  impres- 
sion of  his  advertising  prowess  that  would 
be  invaluable  in  reputation,  even  if  not  in 
direct  sales. 

Year  after  year  his  reputation  grew. 
But  he  never  told  his  advertising  appro- 
priation. It  would  not  be  believed.  The 
result  more  than  justified  the  expense. 
Novelists  flocked  to  him.  His  name  was 
waved  like  a  club  by  scores  of  dissatis- 
fied authors  over  the  heads  of  their  own 
publishers. 

And  he  kept  his  novelists,  too,  —  at 
least  as  well  as  most  other  publishers. 
He  had  his  share  of  "best  sellers,"  and, 
as  some  of  the  best-selling  of  his  best 
sellers  were  among  those  he  advertised 
least,  he  became,  year  by  year,  more 
and  more  justiticd  in  his  policy.  He 
was  a  canny  man  and  a  good  publisher. 
42 


WHAT  MAKES  A  BOOK   SELL 

He  made  money  even  in  the  worst  of 
years. 

But  often  it  worked  too  well.  The 
novel  that  did  n't  sell,  that  would  n't  sell, 
came  along  in  its  turn,  and  the  author 
who  had  sought  the  house  for  its  adver- 
tising came  down  hard  upon  the  pub- 
lisher who  had  accepted  him  knowing  the 
reason  for  his  coming. 

"  It 's  up  to  you,"  the  author  would  say 
grimly. 

"No,"  the  publisher  would  reply,  "it's 
up  to  the  book." 

"But  you  said  —  " 

"  I  said  nothing,"  the  publisher  would 
interrupt;  "it  was  you  that  said  it.  No 
amount  of  advertising  will  sell  a  book 
that  is  n't  what  the  public  wants  just  at 
that  moment — " 

"  But  it  is  because  Dash  &  Company 
talked  that  way  that  I  left  them  and  came 
to  you." 

"All  publishers  talk  that  way  about 
books  that  will  not  sell.  They  talk  that 
43 


THE  PUBLISHER 

way  because  their  experience  with  books 
that  will  not  sell  is  identical  and  leads 
inevitably  to  the  same  conclusion." 

And  so  on. 

But  every  author  must  learn  the  truth, 
as  publishers  learn  it,  namely,  by  bitter 
experience.  Not  the  least  of  every  pub- 
lisher's burdens  is  the  disappointment  of 
his  authors  over  the  inevitability  of  the 
law  of  supply  and  demand.  It  is  a  les- 
son which  he  himself  learned  early  in 
his  business  life,  and  has  learned  over 
again  every  day  since.  With  him,  there- 
fore, the  failure  of  any  book  to  sell  is 
no  surprise,  almost  no  disappointment^ 
The  proportion  of  unprofitable  and  small 
and  moderate  sellers  to  larger  sellers 
is  so  great  in  the  season  by  season  prac- 
tice of  the  years  that  the  advent  of  a 
"real  winner"  is  generally  a  delightful 
surprise. 

The  stud}'  of  failures  and  successes  with 
the  purpose  of  deducing  the  laws  under- 
lying  the  sales  problem  is  the  publisher's 
44 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

everlasting  occupation.  This  is  a  problem 
that  never  has  been  solved.  It  never  will 
be  solved.  It  cannot  be  solved.  It  is  a 
problem  that  changes  like  the  April  sky. 
Conditions  are  never  the  same.  The  taste 
of  the  buying  public  changes,  and  there 
are  a  thousand  publics.  When  your  au- 
thor says  (as  every  author  says  at  least 
once),  "My  book  is  twice  as  good  as 
Jones's,  but  his  sold  and  mine  did  n't;  he 
must  have  a  better  publisher,"  he  as- 
sumes one  public.  He  also  assumes  that 
Jones's  publisher  had  something  to  do 
with  the  book  selling  well.  In  the  lat- 
ter assumption  there  is  at  least  a  small 
percentage  of  fact. 

Authors  who  accept  sales  as  publishers 
accept  them,  namely,  as  so  many  phe- 
nomena naturally  resultant  from  a  com- 
plicated, incalculable,  and  always  differ- 
ent combination  of  humanand  commercial 
causes,  and  make  such  study  as  is  pos- 
sible of  the  elements  with  the  purpose  of 
producing,  so  far  as  possible,  the  same  or 
45 


THE   PUBLISHER 

more  fortunate  combinations  with  suc- 
ceeding books,  are  usually  the  authors 
who  succeed  eventually  in  making  book- 
writing  a  profitable  business. 

But  it  may  be  said  in  passing  that  the 
authors  who  do  this,  who  are  capable  of 
doing  it,  are  rarce  aves  compared  with 
the  other  kind.  That  combination  of 
imagination,  insight,  originality,  power  of 
expression,  combativeness,  vanity,  and 
thin  skin  which  is  commonly  miscalled 
the  "artistic  temperament,"  usually  re- 
fuses to  stand  for  more  than  one  or  two 
failures.  It  then  heaps  the  blame  on  the 
shoulders  of  the  nearest  publisher,  and 
dabbles  with  some  "  easier  "  art.  But  at 
that  there  are  a  plenty  left  of  the  true 
temperament  to  bend  the  enlightened  eye, 
the  chastened  mind,  and  the  hand  ren- 
dered skillful  with  effort  more  laboriously, 
more  painstakingly,  to  the  arduous  ad- 
vancement of  true  art. 

Meantime  the  publisher  continues  per- 
plexedly to  scratch  his  head  alike  over 

46 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

the  inexplicable  failure  and  the  surpris- 
ing success,  questions  his  salesmen  about 
the  latest  freaks  and  usages  and  tenden- 
cies of  the  country's  markets,  consults 
with  booksellers  whose  judgment  he 
trusts,  glances  over  the  newest  book- 
covers  and  the  last  eccentric  advertise- 
ments, and  reads  in  the  elevated  on  the 
way  home  the  novel  from  another  shop 
which  he  heard  that  morning  was  in  its 
fourth  printing.  His  is  the  perpetual  job 
of  keeping  up  to  date  on  the  market  for 
everything  sold  between  covers.  And  I 
can  assure  you  it  is  a  man's  job. 

These  are  days  when  every  business 
process  is  submitted  to  the  merciless 
probe  of  the  analyst.  There  is  no  excuse 
for  any  man  any  longer.  The  Psychology 
of  Salesmanship,  like  the  Psychology  of 
Everything  Else,  is  obtainable  at  a  dollar 
net  under  half  a  dozen  titles,  and  Adver- 
tising claims  to  have  become  Mathemat- 
ical Science.  The  modern  university 
professor  has  made  it  all  so  simple  that, 
47 


THE   PUBLISHER 

of  course,  all  men  in  the  next  generation 
will  be  rich  and  successful. 

The  publisher,however,  has  his  troubles 
notwithstanding.  Unfortunately  books  re- 
fuse to  come  under  the  given  rules.  A 
book  seldom  sells  well  after  the  first 
season,  and  its  first  costs  tend  to  kill  its 
first  year's  profits;  consequently  it  sets  at 
naught  about  every  one  of  the  rules  both 
for  selling  and  advertising.  The  psychol- 
ogist of  sales  who  attempts  to  "  modern- 
ize" the  publisher  is  as  tiresome  and 
futile  as  is  the  advertising  "  expert "  who 
calls  the  publisher  "conservative"  and 
"old-fashioned"  because  he  refuses  to» 
believe  that  a  newspaper  or  a  string  of 
newspapers  of  vast  circulation  at  a  dollar 
or  more  an  agate  line  won't  produce  the 
same  sales  with  a  psychological  novel  as 
with  Cream  of  Sesame  or  Bleachem's 
Pills  —  that  is,  "if  you  will  only  take  big 
enough  copy." 

Far  from  being  "conservative''   and 
"old-fashioned,"    however,    every    pub- 
'    48 


WHAT   MAKES  A   BOOK   SELL 

lisher  wishes  so  heartily  that  what  the 
psychologists  and  experts  say  were  true 
about  easy  sales  that  already  he  has  dis- 
regarded the  experience  of  many  gener- 
ations of  publishers  and  sown  his  own 
wild  oats  —  with  the  customary  result. 
Yes,  and  too  often  he  continues  to  ex- 
periment, in  the  vain  hope  that  times  or 
human  nature  may  have  changed. 

Yet,  though  he  cannot,  without  disas- 
ter, do  the  "stunts  "  of  men  of  some  other 
trades,  there  are  still  many  things  he  may 
do  to  sell  his  books,  to  fit  his  authors  to 
their  market,  and  to  surround  and  satu- 
rate his  business  with  the  atmosphere  of 
success.  Difficult  though  his  business  is, 
it  may  be  conducted  soundly  and  bril- 
liantly. The  problem  of  selling  involves 
importantly  every  department  and  every 
function  of  a  successful  house.  It  does 
not  lie  in  manuscript  selection,  nor  in 
salesmanship,  nor  in  advertising,  but  it 
lies  in  all  of  these  things  and  more. 
Though  it  is  an  axiom  that  few  books 
49 


THE   PUBLISHER 

are  bought  because  of  their  imprint, 
nevertheless  a  house's  sales  involve  mys- 
teriously but  importantly  the  very  tissue 
and  repute  of  the  house.  It  is  not  for 
nothing  that  good  will  figures  so  exten- 
sively in  the  valuations  of  publishing 
businesses.  It  has  many  times  more  re- 
ality in  publishing  than  in  most  other 
businesses.  Next  to  its  list,  this  mysteri- 
ous quality  is  by  far  the  publisher's  most 
precious  possession. 

What,  then,  is  it  that  makes  a  book  sell.'' 
Oh,  so  many  things  that  I  don't  know 
where  to  begin  nor  how  to  make  them 
plain.  A  publisher  whose  exploits  iji 
the  difficult  art  of  combining  selling  and 
literary  qualities  are  altogether  notable, 
replied:  — 

"That  question  is  a  tough  one.  My 
own  growing  belief  is  that  the  answer 
should  be  the  publisher's  Will  and  the 
success  vibrations  that  he  emanates,  ex- 
tending from  his  travelers  and  advertising 
men  to  the  trade  and  the  public.  Woe 
50 


WHAT  MAKES  A  BOOK   SELL 

betide  the  publisher,  however,  who  tries 
too  often  to  give  success  vibrations  for 
books  that  have  n't  quite  the  'potency  of 
life'  in  them;  and,  as  our  friend  Henry 
James  says,  'There  you  are.'" 

This  is  a  statement  as  shrewd  as  it  is 
breezy.  It  contains,  in  fact,  all  the  Law 
and  the  Prophets.  It  is  not,  however, 
the  recipe  for  success  in  publishing  only; 
it  applies  with  approximate  force  to  all 
businesses  dependent  upon  an  appeal  to 
the  public  taste.  It  is  also,  for  instance, 
most  of  the  story  of  producing  plays  and 
selling  calico.  Tli%  human  aspects  and 
conditions  are  at  least  the  same.  The 
difference  from  oBejr  businesses  lies 
chiefly  in  the  more  complicated  problem 
involved  in  publishing,  the  more  delicate 
determinations  of  what  the  public  wants 
and  what  it  does  not  want,  the  more  diffi- 
cult medium  for  influencing  large  bodies 
of  possible  purchasers  and  the  compara- 
tive smallness  of  the  possible  market, 
with  its  consequently  greater  proportional 
SI 


THE   PUBLISHER 

penalty  for  not  guessing  right.  The  ma- 
rine engine  and  the  chronometer  are  both 
describable  in  the  language  and  accord- 
ino^  to  the  laws  of  mechanics,  althouo^h  it 
does  not  follow  that  a  good  machine- 
builder  would  make  even  a  mediocre 
watch-builder.  It  is  the  universality  of 
our  publisher's  phrase,  at  the  same  time 
allowing  for  these  differences,  that  makes 
it  so  happy. 

As  is  most  other  human  mechanism, 
business  and  otherwise,  therefore,  it  is  the 
Will  at  the  top,  to  adopt  the  term,  though 
another  would  serve  as  well,  that  is  the 
principal  element  in  the  publisher's  suc- 
cess in  selling  books.  How  he  perceives 
so  often  just  the  things  that  his  public 
wants  and  how  he  conveys  his  "success 
vibrations"  to  salesmen  and  public  are 
problems  of  personality  and  genius.  The 
shopkeeper  who  becomes  the  "merchant 
prince"  of  his  city, the  manufacturer  who 
puts  his  soap  in  ever}'  twentieth  kitchen 
in  the  land,  the  hotel-keeper  who  wins  for 
52 


WHAT   MAKES  A   BOOK   SELL 

his  house  the  ribbon  of  fashionable  pres- 
tige, all  possess  this  divine  Will.  There's 
not  nearly  so  much  luck  in  the  world  as 
is  generally  believed.  Men  usually  get 
what  is  coming  to  them.  Most  "bad  luck" 
results  from  the  Right  Man  blundering 
into  the  Wrong  Shop.  The  Right  Man  in 
the  Right  Shop  makes  his  own  luck. 
■  A  publisher  seldom  stops  to  figure  out 
the  reasons  for  his  success  anymore  than 
the  average  successful  man  in  any  other 
business.  He  is  lucky.  Or  he's  "got 
things  running."  Any  phrase  will  do  if 
called  upon  for  an  explanation.  The  fact 
is  that  he  lives  and  works  in  such  sym- 
pathy with  his  tools  and  his  market;  that 
he  identifies  himself  so  completely  with 
his  work;  that,  day  by  day,  season  by 
season,  year  by  year,  he  so  radiates  the 
spirit  of  the  institution  he  is  upbuilding; 
that  presently  he,  or  the  business  (for  the 
two  things  merge  into  one  in  the  years), 
acquires  a  power  and  a  personality  of  as- 
tonishing magnitude  and,  within  its  lines 
53 


THE   PUBLISHER 

of  influence,  quite  irresistible.  His  clerk 
and  his  stenographer  feel  this  mysterious 
spirit  in  the  very  air.  His  advertising 
man  becomes  saturated  with- it,  and  trans- 
lates it  into  palpitating  appeal.  His  sales- 
man absorbs  it,  and  exudes  it  to  the  in- 
crease of  his  sales  and  the  making  of  his 
own  reputation.  This  is  the  spirit  that 
wins  battles.  In  business  it  is  called  by 
many  names.  It  is  what  is  generall}-  meant 
when  a  staff  is  said  to  have  esprit  de  corps. 
Our  publisher's  "success  waves"  express 
the  idea  as  well  as  any. 

This  common  but  mysterious  personal 
quality  I  regard  the  greatest  element  in 
selling  books. 

Once  a  novel  sold  close  to  the  half-mil- 
lion mark,  which  was,  from  every  point 
of  view,  quite  an  ordinary  production. 
It  had  no  literary  or  narrative  or  senti- 
mental distinction  whatever.  It  contained 
no  element  of  novelty,  either  in  the  stor}' 
itself  or  in  its  characterization.  It  was 
a  fairly  well-written,  interesting  novel, 
54 


WHAT   MAKES   A  BOOK   SELL 

but  little  else.  It  had  no  advantage  over 
fifty  or  more  other  novels,  just  as  interest- 
ing or  more  so,  published  the  same  sea- 
son, which  did  not  sell  more  than  ten  to 
twenty  thousand  each  —  except  that  the 
author's  former  novels,  all  equally  without 
unusual  distinction,  also  had  large  sales. 

The  doctors  have  sat  on  this  case,  and 
various  have  been  the  explanations.  Ad- 
vertising cranks  grew  red  in  the  face 
proclaiming  it  the  triumph  of  clever  ad- 
vertising, for  the  book  had  been  very 
thoroughl}^  and  skillfully  exploited.  Anti- 
advertising  orators  struggled  fearfully  to 
discover  some  occult  popular  quality  in 
the  book  itself  which  could  explain  the 
sale  in  spite  of  the  advertising.  Still  others 
proclaimed  it  largely  a  triumph  of  sales- 
manship. The  fact  is  that  all  three  were 
partially  right. 

The  greatest  of  all  causes,  however,  the 
cause  of  causes,  lies  somewhere  in  the 
personality  of  the  publisher.  The  sales  tri- 
umph of  this  author  was  a  triumph  of  faith 
55 


THE   PUBLISHER 

—  his  publisher's  faith.  In  the  trade  this 
publisher  was  admiringl}'  called  "  the 
crazy  man" — because  he  was  so  "crazy" 
about  his  author.  It  was  his  only  author. 
He  believed  him  to  be  —  really,  honestly 
believed  him  to  be  —  in  many  respects 
the  greatest  living  novelist.  He  devoted 
himself  to  making  his  author's  workknown 
and  read  as  no  other  living  novelist's 
work  was  known  and  read.  He  could  talk 
of  nothing  else  than  his  author.  Doubt- 
less he  dreamed  and  thought  of  little  else. 
His  intense  conviction  got  somehow  into 
his  advertising  and  made  the  reader  be- 
lieve even  against  his  will.  His  fervof 
passed  to  his  salesmen  and  they  talked  as 
men  inspired.  The  "  big  trade,"  which  he 
sold  in  person,  were  willingly  carried 
along  by  his  enthusiasm  and  determina- 
tion, for  they  saw  in  these  qualities  the 
promise  of  success;  therefore, they  helped 
him  along  by  good  orders  and  personal 
work.  Of  course  he  was  also  a  sound  busi- 
ness   man,  though    his    enthusiasm  was 

56 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

responsible  for  the  great  daring  of  his 
start. 

This  is  the  whole  story  of  this  novel's 
and  this  author's  great  sales.  It  is  an  ex- 
traordinary story  —  to  be  hitched  up  with 
success.  But  most  of  all  it  is  an  extraor- 
dinary example  of  this  wonderful  per- 
sonal quality  in  leadership  that  is  as 
much  an  element  in  successful  selling  as 
it  is  in  successful  war  and  politics. 

So  much  for  this  particular  case,  which, 
however  valuable  as  an  example  of  a  great 
principle,  is  in  other  respects  altogether 
exceptionable.  For  it  is  evident  that  every 
author  cannot  have  his  individual  pub- 
lisher, and  that  very  few  authors  have  the 
universalit}^  to  justify  and  to  make  profit- 
able such  distinguished  devotion.  In  the 
nature  of  things  there  must  be  few  pub- 
lishers and  many  authors.  In  the  nature  of 
things  a  publisher  cannot  be  as  "crazy" 
about  each  of  five  hundred  authors  as  he 
can  about  one  —  especially  if  a  big  seller. 

And  yet  again  I  make  my  point  right 
57 


THE   PUBLISHER 

here,  for  our  publisher,  if  his  books  are 
going  to  reach  their  highest  possibiHty  of 
sales,  must  be,  in  the  same  best  sense  as 
the  publisher  of  the  one  author  referred 
to,  "  crazy  "  enough  to  inspire  ever}'  one 
who  intimately  or  remotely  has  to  do  with 
his  books  with  the  impulsive  belief  that 
these  books  possess  qualities  of  genius  or 
of  excellence  or  even  merely  of  potential 
popularity  that  set  them  in  a  class  quite 
apart  and  altogether  superior  to  the  com- 
mon run.  When  this  is  accomplished 
(and  it  is  accomplished  less  by  doing 
any  given  thing  than  by  being  "  crazy  "), 
you  have  the  back  of  your  sales  problem 
broken;  the  rest  is  painstaking  and  watch- 
fulness and  common  cleverness  and  grub- 
bing labor. 

Also  our  ideal  publisher  really  is  as 
crazy  over  every  author  and  every  book 
on  his  list  as  he  is  over  his  best  seller, 
but  in  degree  in  proportion  to  the  possi- 
bilities of  each.  He  does  not  demand  that 
a  study  of  the  Aztec  Criminal  Code  shall 

58 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

sell  as  many  copies  as  the  last  detective 
story,  but  he  does  demand  that  each  shall 
do  the  absolutely  best  there  is  in  it  to  do. 
It  is  often  harder  to  make  a  volume  of 
verse  payback  its  manufacturing  and  pub- 
licity costs  than  to  run  a  popular  geog- 
raphy into  five  figures.  But  it  must  be 
done.  Publishers  are  often  accused  of 
being  fussers.  Why  should  they  not  be 
fussers?  Think  of  how  many  individual 
books  they  have  to  fuss  about! 

This  most  important  though  inconspicu- 
ous personal  element  is  what  distinguishes 
Real  Advertising  from  Brute  Publicity.  In 
common  speech  there  is  no  such  distinc- 
tion as  this;  both  are  called  Advertising. 
But  the  majority  of  publishers  and  many 
thousands  of  habitual  book  purchasers 
will  instantly  appreciate  the  difference. 
We  are  in  the  heyday  of  advertising,  but 
book  advertising  has  degenerated.  While 
the  general  advertising  pages  of  many 
magazines  are  more  interesting,  even 
more  profitable  to  read,  than  their  text, 
59 


THE   PUBLISHER 

while  brains  and  skill  of  the  very  highest 
order  have  pushed  the  processes  of  com- 
mon trade  into  the  penumbra  of  Art,  there 
is  a  greater  proportion  of  Brute  Publicity 
in  the  book  advertising  of  to-day  than 
there  was  a  decade  ago  when  trade  adver- 
tising was,  as  compared  with  the  clever, 
the  altogether  admirable,  product  of  to- 
day, still  in  its  infanc}'.  Any  open-minded 
observer  will  bear  me  out  in  this,  strange 
though  it  may  seem  to  those  who  did  not 
closely  or  critically  observe  the  book  ad- 
vertising of  the  earlier  period.  Publishers 
seem  to  be  abandoning  the  very  qualities 
of  distinction,  in  the  da3's  when  trade  ad- 
vertising has  acquired  distinction,  that 
they  were  called  old-fashioned  for  insist- 
ing upon  in  the  days  when  most  other 
advertising  was  raw.  Of  course,  I  am 
speaking  of  general  conditions;  there  are 
exceptions. 

The  reason  for  this  decline  in  quality  is 
historical.  There  was  a  time  when  pub- 
lishers realized  that  they  were  living  in 
60 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL' 

an  age  that  had  passed.  This  was  say  a 
dozen  or  fifteen  years  ago.  Advertising 
had  been  discovered,  but  publishers  were 
still  "announcing"  —  which  means  that 
they  mentioned  new  books  once  or  twice 
upon  publication  in  several  bookish  peri- 
odicals and  then  left  them  to  be  found, 
through  the  years,  by  their  prospective 
purchasers. 

But  advertising  was  making  fortunes 
overnight  in  other  businesses  and  pres- 
ently one  or  two  publishers  experimented 
with  popular  novels.  The  results  were 
electrical,  and  in  short  order  all  were  at  it. 
The  immediate  result  was  an  increase  in 
business  almost  unbelievable.  Then  came 
the  Great  Plunge.  For  four  or  five  years 
publishers  competed  like  rival  showmen. 
Newspapers  and  magazines  opened  book 
departments.  Book  supplements,  book 
lists,  book  periodicals  of  several  kinds 
were  born  almost  overnight.  There  was  a 
wild  scramble  for  the  new  El  Dorado  on 
the  part  of  "mediums"  that  had  never 
6i 


THE   PUBLISHER 

carried  book  advertising  before.  Solici- 
tors stood  in  line  at  publishers'  doors 
demanding  copy. 

This  picturesque  period  was  coincident 
with  a  forward  movement  of  magnitude 
in  American  publishing  which  this  is  not 
the  place  to  describe.  The  business  as- 
sumed far  greater  bulk,  new  proportions, 
new  importance.  The  wonderful  maga- 
zine business  of  to-day  was  then  shaping 
and  looming.    History  was  making. 

It  was  natural  that,  tossed  in  the  rapids 
of  these  larger  movements,  book  advertis- 
ing should  be  overdone.  In  the  scramble 
to  overlook  no  corner  in  the  newly  discov^ 
ered  market  (for  the  Greater  Public  had 
been  unbottled,  and,  like  the  Genii  in  the 
Arabian  Nights,  seemed  to  till  the  sky), 
publishers  far  over-spent  propriety.  Then 
came  retrenchment,  slight  at  first,  till  the 
limits  of  Opportunit}'  better  defined  them- 
selves, then  greater  and  still  greater,  as, 
with  clearer  vision,  came  the  apprecia- 
tion of  how  greatly  book  advertising  had 
62 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

overspread  the  boundaries  of  profit.  And 
we  are  still  retrenching,  though  it  seems 
likely  that  the  reaction  is  nearly  done 
and  that  we  shall  soon  again  react,  but 
now  toward  a  condition  of  health}'  enter- 
prise. With  all  of  which,  being  natural 
and  human,  I  have  no  quarrel. 

But  this  I  do  decry,  that,  retrenching 
when  all  other  forms  of  advertising  were 
bounding  forward,  reversing,  in  its  little 
eddy,  the  great  rush  of  the  main  current, 
book  advertising  has  tended  to  lose  the 
fineness  of  its  spirit.  It  ran  down  at  the 
heel,  like  a  man  out  of  work;  became 
shapeless,  like  a  woman  past  her  pride. 
Nobody  has  seemed  to  care.  In  many 
publishing  houses  to-day  the  advertising 
is  the  secondary  duty  of  its  writer,  or  is 
made  up  by  a  stenographer  after  perfunc- 
tory instructions  from  the  publisher. 
There  are  not  many  who  seem  still  to 
employ  first-rate  minds  to  maintain  the 
standards  set  up  in  the  days  when  the  in- 
tentness  of  the  house  was  concentrated 

^3 


THE   PUBLISHER 

upon  the  daily  or  weekly  appeal  to  the 
public  that  buys.  And  this  is  so,  I  am 
convinced,  because  of  a  reason  that  is  hu- 
man and  natural,  but  nevertheless  to  be 
deprecated,  namel}',  because  it  has  be- 
come a  sort  of  habit  in  publishing  houses 
to  look  upon  advertising  slightingly,  as  a 
necessary  evil,  simply  because  it  is  no 
longer  regarded  as  importantly  as  it  was 
in  the  boom  days. 

This  decline  in  quality  is  especially 
pitiful,  as  I  have  intimated,  because  it  oc- 
curs in  a  period  of  remarkable  achieve- 
ment in  other  advertising  fields,  and  there 
must  soon  come  our  reaction  to  sanity. 
Again  the  publisher  must  carefully,  pains- 
takingly, fashion  each  advertisement  to 
catch  the  interest  and  arouse  the  desire 
of  the  particular  audience  at  which  it  is 
aimed.  I  do  not  contend  that  he  must  ad- 
vertise more  freely.  That  is  quite  another 
story.  But  he  must  put  all  the  more  spirit 
and  consideration  into  the  shaping  and 
aiming  of  his  advertising  projectiles  be- 

64 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

cause  they  are  fewer  than  they  used  to  be. 
This  Is  reason  and  business,  but  not  hu- 
man nature.  Of  course  it  is  hard  to  con- 
centrate first-rate  brain  quality  on  any 
department  of  effort  that  does  not  happen 
to  be  "on  the  boom "  at  the  moment. 
Your  really  big  publisher,  then,  must  be 
big  enough  to  see  this  and  "  crazy  "  enough 
to  inspire  the  best  brain  he  has  in  his  es- 
tablishment with  an  advertising  enthusi- 
asm that,  in  boom  times,  needs  no  special 
inspiring  cause.  Otherwise,  he  must  write 
his  own  advertising.  When  the  pendulum 
again  swings  back,  no  doubt  all  publish- 
ers will  again  endow  their  advertising 
writing  with  the  care  and  brilliancy  which 
only  a  few  have  maintained  through  this 
period  of  necessary  retrenchment. 

As  for  the  amount  of  advertising  any 
house  should  do,  that  is  a  purely  relative 
question.  In  general,  no  one  will  criticize 
an  advertising  expenditure  of  ten  per 
cent  of  gross  Income  from  trade  sales  — 
but  of  course  this  must  be  understood  to 

65 


THE   PUBLISHER 

coverall  publicity  costs,  not  merely  maga- 
zine and  newspaper  advertising  bills. 
Let  us  admit,  in  the  start,  that  a  large 
part  of  all  advertising  expenditures  is 
wasted,  that  "  results  "  can  almost  never 
be  "traced,"  that  it  is  largely  "shooting 
in  the  dark."  All  the  more  reason,  there- 
fore, that  your  publisher  should  entrust 
this  all-important  work  to  the  best  judg- 
ment he  can  afford  to  employ.  Not  a 
so-called  advertisings"  expert."  The  con- 
ditions of  successful  book  advertising  are 
highly  specialized,  and  it  is  a  publisher 
who  studies  advertising,  not  an  advertis- 
ing expert  who  studies  publishing,  that 
the  conditions  demand.  And  the  best- 
trained  publisher  who  can  be  hired  for 
the  job  will  save  or  make  his  consider^ 
able  salary  times  over  every  year. 

I  have  said  that  the  conditions  of  book 
advertising  are  highl}-  specialized.  A  vol- 
ume might  explain.  Sufficient  here  to  say 
that  one  principal  fundamental  difference 
is  that  the  publisher  has  as  many  busi- 
66 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

nesses  to  advertise  as  he  has  books.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  glove-maker,  let  us  say, 
may  have  as  many  styles  as  a  publisher 
has  books,  but,  in  an  advertising  sense, 
as  in  every  other  sense,  he  has,  unlike 
the  publisher,  only  the  one  business. 

For  example,  Mrs.  Ess  is  impressed  by 
the  advertising  of  the  Coronation  Glove 
and  asks  for  it  at  the  department  store 
where  she  deals.  "  I  liked  what  you  said 
about  Style  23,"  she  says.  The  sales- 
woman shows  her  several  styles,  out  of 
which,  at  length,  she  chooses  one.  It  is 
not  Style  23,  but  it  is,  you  observe,  the 
Coronation  Glove  she  has  asked  for  and 
purchased.  Then  she  goes  to  the  book 
counter. 

"  Have  you  got  ^Adventures  in  a  Ha- 
rem?'" she  asks.  "I  saw  the  advertise- 
ment and  liked  what  they  said  about  it." 

"H-m,"  says  the  saleswoman,  "I  don't 
know  the  title.  Must  be  a  brand-new 
book." 

"Yes,"  says  Mrs.  Ess,  "it  said  ^Pub- 
67 


THE   PUBLISHER 

lished  this  day/  at  the  top  of  the  adver- 
tisement." 

"I  suppose  we  just  have  it  in,"  says 
the  saleswoman.  "It  will  be  —  oh,  who 
is  the  publisher?" 

"The  publisher?"  asks  Mrs.  Ess. 
"  What  do  you  mean  ?  I  thought  you  'd 
have  the  book.  You  have  everything 
as  soon  as  it  is  out.  Do  you  mean  the 
printer?  Why,  I  don't  know.  How  could 
I  know?" 

"No,  the  publisher,"  says  the  sales- 
woman, running  over  the  list  of  books 
not  yet  on  the  counters.  "You  know: 
the  firm  that  published  it.  Their  name 
must  have  been  on  the  advertisement." 

"Oh,  yes,"  says  Mrs.  Ess,  "there  was 
a  name,  I  think,  but  the  title  is  'Adven- 
tures in  a  Harem.'  The  author's  name 
was  —  let  me  see  —  I  think  it  was  Green 
—  somebody  Green." 

"Here  it  is,"  says  the  saleswoman,  "up 
this  very  minute." 

Mrs.  Ess  carefully  examines  the  cover 
68 


WHAT   MAKES   A  BOOK   SELL 

of  the  book.  "I  don't  care  much  for 
that,"  she  says;  "I  don't  like  the  girl's 
face.  She  looks  silly.  I  hate  silly  hero- 
ines." 

Then  she  glances  at  one  or  two  of  the 
illustrations  and  runs  carelessly  through 
the  leaves. 

"  It  is  awfully  short,"  she  says.  "  If  a 
story  is  good,  I  like  it  long.  If  it  is  n't 
good,  I  don't  want  it  at  all.  Is  there  any- 
thing else  here  I  haven't  read.?  What 
would  you  recommend?" 
■  The  saleswoman  painstakingly  de- 
scribes four  or  five  recent  novels,  but 
Mrs.  Ess  does  not  fancy  them  on  exam- 
ination, and  she  finally  picks  out  one  that 
mysteriously  appeals  to  her  mood.  Its 
publisher?  I  don't  know,  and  neither 
did  she. 

You  see,  the  advertising  results  are 
radicall}'  different.  The  glove-maker  has 
made  a  customer  for  his  brand,  irrespec- 
tive of  any  particular  style,  a  customer 
who  will  probably  come  again  and  again 

69 


THE   PUBLISHER 

until  some  new  advertisement  catches 
her  fancy.  But  the  publisher  has  accom- 
plished little.  He  has  not  sold  the  lady  a 
book.  He  has  not  even  impressed  his 
name  upon  the  memory  of  a  possible 
future  purchaser.  He  has  persuaded  her 
to  pick  up  that  particular  book  from  the 
thousands  offered  and  give  it  a  few  mo- 
ments'examination.  And  that  is  all.  Even 
if  she  had  purchased  the  book,  she  might 
not  have  liked  it,  and  if  she  had  not,  she 
would  have  industriously  informed  her 
friends  that  it  was  poor  or  silly  and  ad- 
vised them  not  to  get  it.  If  she  had  liked 
it,  she  would  lend  her  copy  to  several  of 
her  friends.  But,  on  returning  to  the  shop 
for  other  books,  neither  she  nor  her 
friends  would  ask  to  see  Dash  &  Com- 
pany's new  novels.  She  would  ask  again 
for  a  title,  or,  having  none  in  mind,  would 
look  over  the  counter  for  something  that 
"  looked  interesting." 

The  book  advertiser's  problem,  there- 
fore, is  one  requiring  a  quality  of  care  and 
70 


WHAT  MAKES   A  BOOK   SELL 

judgment  not  demanded  of  the  glove  ad- 
vertiser, for,  if  he  has  fifty  books  on  his 
list,  he  has  fifty  special  problems  to  the 
glove-man's  one.  And  as  one  injudicious 
plunge  may  practically  ruin  the  profits  of 
any  of  these  books  for  a  season  or  two, 
his  responsibility  is  times  greater  than 
that  of  the  other,  whose  problem  is  chiefly 
to  cover,  as  cheaply  and  effectively  as  pos- 
sible, all  parts  of  the  country  inhabited  by 
women  who  can  afford  to  buy  his  gloves; 
and,  so  long  as  there  continues  a  satisfac- 
tory relation  of  profit  to  expenditure,  he 
need  not  worry  a  great  deal  about  occa- 
sionally making  errors  in  placing  his  ad- 
vertisements. 

To  the  publisher  general  results  are 
only  one  of  the  many  important  consider- 
ations. And  these  other  considerations 
continually  react  and  tend  to  complicate 
the  general  problem.  For  instance,  in  ad- 
dition to  the  books  that  follow  a  normal 
sale  and  may  be  advertised  out  of  the 
abundance  of  experience  are  those  which 
71 


THE   PUBLISHER 

present  speculative  opportunities,  books 
that  may  bound  into  larger  or  handsome 
sales  under  judicious  advertising  — and 
each  of  these  is  a  different  kind  of  prob- 
lem. And  then  there  are  the  books  that 
may  be  profitably  over-advertised  for 
other  reasons  than  sales,  for  the  purpose, 
for  instance,  of  satisfying  and  retaining  a 
valuable  author,  or  with  the  object  of  in- 
fluencing other  authors. 

No,  your  book-advertising  artist  must 
not  only  be  the  Verestchagin  of  gloves 
and  soap,  capable  of  gaud}'  frescoes  meas- 
urable by  the  square  3'ard,  but  he  must 
also  be  the  Meissonnier  of  the  micro- 
scopic stroke  and  the  six-inch  master- 
piece. 

People  will  tell  you  that  the  book-pub- 
lishing business  is  on  the  decline,  but 
you  must  not  believe  them.  It  is  not. 
Fewer  new  titles  may  be  published  this 
year  than  last  year  or  the  year  before,  but 
what  of  that?  It  probably  indicates  a 
sound  reaction  from  the  great  title-over- 
72 


WHAT  MAKES   A  BOOK   SELL 

production  of  recent  years.  But  even  so, 
this  year's  grand  totals  will  show  the  cus- 
tomary healthy  increase  both  in  number 
of  volumes  sold  and  in  gross  business.  An- 
other group  of  casual  observers  will  reach 
the  same  conclusion  because  of  the  steady 
decline  in  book  advertising;  but  we  have 
already  noted  the  reason  for  that  decline. 
I  have  read  articles  by  these  surface  ob- 
servers which  they  would  not  have  writ- 
ten had  they  taken  the  trouble  to  look  up 
statistics.  No,  book  publishing  is  not 
declining,  but  it  is,  like  most  other  busi- 
nesses, changing. 

The  cheap  novel  is  revolutionizing  fic- 
tion publication  in  so  far  as  it  is  taking 
care  of  a  good  deal  of  the  vast  yearly  in- 
crease in  the  sale  of  novels.  Most  readers 
do  not  require  the  new  novels,  but  de- 
mand the  good  novels;  and,  for  the  most 
part,  it  is  the  good  novels  that  survive 
original  publication  and  pass  into  the 
larger  and  often  the  longer  life  of  the  re- 
print. 

73 


THE   PUBLISHER 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  al\va3's 
those  whose  rapid  reading  keeps  them 
abreast  of  publication  and  there  are  al- 
ways very  many  who  demand  the  latest 
thing.  These  purchasers  are  numerous 
enough  to  provide  a  ready  and  profitable 
market  for  original  publications.  But  the 
great  growth  in  the  enormous  army  of 
fiction  purchasers  will  be  found  more  and 
more  among  patrons  of  the  cheaper  re- 
prints, and,  as  these  require  no  advertis- 
ing, having  made  their  fame  in  their  more 
expensive  original  forms,  there  results  no 
increase  in  advertising  corresponding  to 
the  increase  in  business.  In  fact  the  tendr 
ency  is  the  other  way,  and  this  is  due  in 
part  to  the  fact  that  publishers  nowadays, 
counting  upon  the  certain  profits  of  the 
cheaper  edition  to  come,  feel  less  need 
for  forcing  the  original  sale. 

But,  when  the  advertising  reaction 
comes,  there  will  be  no  return  to  the  bulk 
of  former  years,  or  to  anything  even  ap- 
proaching it.  The  principal  reason  for  this, 
74 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

of  course,  Is  that  publishers  have  mean- 
time rediscovered  their  market,  sounded 
it,  bounded  it,  charted  it,  determined  it  as 
definitely  as  any  market  can  be  deter- 
mined in  these  daj'S  of  shifting  conditions. 
The  book  advertising  of  the  future  will 
not  be  experimental,  as  in  the  past,  ex- 
cept, of  course,  in  the  case  of  occasional 
novels  whose  chances  of  big  circulation 
tempt  to  speculation.  The  spirit  of  the 
new  book  advertising  will  rather  be  sci- 
entific, and,  with  higher  brain  power  and 
more  careful  attention  than  is  generally 
used  at  present,  will  aim  for  more  defi- 
nite results  than  ever  before.  With  re- 
sults, advertising  will  naturally  increase 
in  quantity;  but  not  again  will  publishers 
with  charted  memories  run  upon  the 
shoals  of  squandered  profits.  No  other 
business,  probably,  must  steer  its  adver- 
tising course  through  a  channel  so  shifty 
and  so  shallow. 

It  is  also  safe  predicting  that  the  tend- 
ency of  recent  years  toward  restricting  ad- 
75 


THE   PUBLISHER 

vertising  to  a  few  mediums  will  remain 
the  policy  of  the  future.  To-day,  as  yes- 
terday, as  always,  the  student  and  the 
habitual  reader  remain  the  publisher's 
great  dependence.  These  persons  consti- 
tute an  ever-increasing  buying  public. 
Just  as  the  Sunday  newspaper  readers  of 
the  last  decade  are  the  magazine  readers 
of  this,  so  are  magazine  readers  of  to-day 
continually  becoming  book  readers.  The 
process  is  one  of  natural  evolution.  Those 
persons  are  short-sighted  who  see  the  de- 
cay of  serious  reading  in  the  enormous 
patronage  of  magazines.  The  magazines 
are  the  intermediate  course,  insuring  the' 
book  market  of  the  future. 

This  substantial  book  public  does  not 
need  to  be  sought  by  the  advertiser.  It  is 
itself  the  eager  seeker  for  the  new  and  the 
worthwhile  between  book  covers.  And  it 
will  naturally  seek  its  information  where 
information  can  be  found  most  easil}'  and 
cheaply,  namely,  in  the  advertising  pages 
of  those  periodicals  habitually  used  by  the 

76 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

largest  number  of  publishers.  There  are 
not  many  of  these  periodicals,  and  it  is 
obvious  that  the  publisher  who  seeks  this 
useful  public  need  go  little  further  with 
his  advertising.  There  remains  for  him, 
therefore,  principally  the  problem  of  qual- 
ity and  individuality  in  the  preparation  of 
his  copy  and  display. 

As  for  the  greater  buying  public,  the 
casual  book-buyers  and  occasional  pur- 
chasers of  novels,  these,  experience  has 
shown,  can  be  advertised  for  profitably 
only  at  great  risk.  Except  just  before 
Christmas  they  are  purchasers  of  practi- 
call}^  nothing  but  novels,  and  every  novel 
by  another  than  a  well-known  and  popu- 
lar novelist  becomes  a  selling  problem 
presenting  odds  heavily  against  the  ad- 
vertiser. It  was  this  problem  of  reaching 
the  occasional  novel-reader  that  precipi- 
tated the  great  experiment  I  have  referred 
to  when  "  David  Harum  "  and  a  few  other 
larger  sellers  that  followed  showed  this 
new  field  of  enterprise  to  be  of  such  enor- 
77 


THE   PUBLISHER 

mous  size  that  it  challenged  the  spirit  of 
even  the  most  conservative.  But  the  years 
of  expansion  and  contraction  that  have  fol- 
lowed have  proved  that,  with  only  a  few 
exceptions,  the  fitful  fancy  of  these  occa- 
sional novel-buyers  can  be  concentrated 
upon  an}'  given  title  only  at  an  advertis- 
ing expense  that  destroys  profit.  More- 
over, in  the  years,  and  in  obedience  to  nat- 
ural law,  a  hundred  titles  have  crowded 
into  the  place  of  every  one  that  then 
claimed  popularity,  and  this  still  further 
complicates  the  problem. 

All  attempts  to  chart  this  shifting  un- 
known sea  have  failed.  Some  have  tried 
to  play  the  game  after  a  "  system,"  as  the 
gambler  attempts  to  reduce  the  chances  of 
faro  or  roulette.  One  house  deliberately 
settled  down  to  solve  this  one  problem, 
and  for  some  years  published  only  a  given 
number  of  novels  a  season,  each  novel 
chosen  specially  for  the  purpose  of  catch- 
ing this  greater  public.  Each  novel  was 
started  off  with  a  thousand  dollars'  worth 
7S 


WHAT   MAKES   A  BOOK   SELL 

of  advertising  and  received  additional  ap- 
propriations of  a  size  exactl}^  proportional 
to  the  amount  of  returns.  Automatically, 
so  to  speak,  one  novel  would  swell  in 
sales  and  advertising,  while  another,  un- 
der the  same  formula,  would  dwindle  and 
disappear.  This  seemed  to  work  all  right 
for  several  boom  seasons,  but  unfortu- 
nately trade  conditions  would  persist  in 
changing.  This  would  be  shown  b}^  dis- 
turbances in  the  returns,  and  our  pioneers 
would  experiment  with  a  new  formula, 
which,  in  turn,  would  develop  its  periods 
of  prosperity  and  decline.  Then  to  see, 
every  now  and  then,  some  comparatively 
unadvertised  novel  from  another  house 
rush  into  an  astonishing  success  could 
not  fail  to  be  upsetting  to  our  pioneers, 
who  were  never  sure  that  some  of  their 
own  successes,  which  had  cost  ten  or 
twenty  thousand  dollars  to  advertise, 
would  not  have  sold  equally  well  at  per- 
haps fifteen  hundred  each. 

Nor  has  newspaper  reviewing  the  ira- 
79 


THE   PUBLISHER 

portance  as  an  element  in  book  sales  that 
once  was  supposed.  A  careful  study  dur- 
ing some  years  of  the  relations  of  sales  to 
the  number  and  the  quality  of  the  "re- 
views "  fails  to  discover  any  dependable 
ratio.  No  doubt  the  notices  of  a  limited 
number  of  journals  which  a  limited  num- 
ber of  book-lovers  habitually  consult  for 
book  information  prove  efTective  as  a  sell- 
ing agency.  But  results  can  be  traced  no 
further. 

Books  are  written  to-day  about  sales- 
manship, but  the  subject  is  not  one  of 
critical  importance  to  the  publisher  of  fic- 
tion and  general  literature.  I  do  not  mean> 
to  say  that  good  salesmen  are  not  impor- 
tant to  publishers,  but  that  publishing 
does  not  call  for  special  qualities  in  mere 
trade  selling  as  it  calls  for  special  quali- 
ties in  advertising.  The  same  qualities  are 
demanded  of  book  salesmen  as  of  sales- 
men in  other  businesses  which  offer  goods 
to  retail  shops.  There  is  not,  however, 
in  books,  the  same  opportunity  for  sell- 
80 


WHAT   MAKES  A  BOOK   SELL 

ing  "  stunts  "  as  in  most  other  commodi- 
ties carried  over  the  country.  In  the  first 
place,  and  principally,  the  field  of  sale  is 
much  smaller.  A  town  with  twenty  shops 
carrying  dry  goods  will  have  only  one  or  at 
most  two  shops  carrying  books.  A  book 
salesman  is  expected  not  only  to  "know 
his  trade  "  intimately,  but  to  know  the 
whole  book  trade  of  the  country.  Book- 
selling often  becomes  a  matter  of  barter 
between  intimate  personal  friends  who 
call  each  other  by  their  first  names  and 
make  golf  dates  a  season  ahead. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  denying  the 
great  advantage  to  the  publisher  of  the 
best  of  salesmanship  in  his  force,  but  it 
seems  to  me  that,  other  things  equal,  the 
salesman  who  will  be  of  most  use  to  him 
in  the  long  run  is  not  the  man  who  will 
load  up  his  customer  with  the  biggest 
given  sale  so  much  as  he  who  will  prove 
the  most  transparent  medium  for  the  pas- 
sage of  the  publisher's  own  enthusiasm 
and  personality  and  genius  into  the  con- 
8i 


THE   PUBLISHER 

sciousness  and  sympathies  of  his  retail 
customer. 

As  to  such  selling  devices  as  picture 
covers,  illustrations,  and  decorations  gen- 
erally, they  are  part  of  the  campaign  to 
catch  that  casual  public  of  which  we  have 
spoken.  Many  publishers  who  will  not 
take  the  long  chances  of  advertising  for 
Mrs.  Ess's  patronage,  will  design  a  cover 
to  catch  her  wandering  fancy  at  the  book 
counter  or  load  down  their  volume  with 
frightfully  expensive  colored  illustrations. 
The  argument  in  favor  of  this  is  that,  if 
3'our  book  does  not  "  catch  on,"  you  are 
in  for  only  the  original  cover  and  picture 
costs  which,  heavy  though  they  may  be, 
will  be  only  a  fraction  of  any  half-decent 
advertising  campaign.  The  weakness  of 
it  is  that,  if  your  book  does  sell,  you  are 
saddled  with  colored  illustrations  to  the 
bitter  end,  whereas  you  might  stop  your 
advertising  when  the  run  is  really  on  and 
take  real  profits  for  say  a  hundred  thou- 
sand copies. 

82 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

The  pressure  on  the  publisher  from 
his  salesmen  and,  through  them,  from 
the  trade,  is  always  strongly  for  bright- 
colored  covers  and  illustrations,  and  the 
fair  success  of  many  novels  is  attributed 
to  the  external  beauty  which  attracted 
Mrs.  Ess  and  her  friends  at  the  book 
counter.  At  the  same  time  an  infinitely 
larger  number  of  novels  equipped  with 
outward  beauty  or  gaudiness  have  failed 
utterly;  and  perhaps  most  of  the  conspic- 
uous successes  of  each  year  have  appeared 
between  plain  covers  and  without  illus- 
trations. It  is  anybody's  race.  You  may 
pick  your  own  horse ! 

So  finally  we  come  down  to  the  Book 
itself! 

Ah!  Now  we  have  torn  aside  the  cur- 
tain and  entered  the  sanctuary.  We  are 
not  the  first  by  any  means.  Here  is  one 
celebrated  publisher,  at  least,  who  has 
dwelt  comfortably  and  happily  and  most 
profitably  here  for  these  many  3'ears, 
scorning  the  jibes  of  those  who  rushed 

83 


THE   PUBLISHER 

after  the  noisy  advertising  parade  some 
years  ago  and  who  have  since  been 
dropping  back,  one  by  one,  all  looking 
just  a  little  foolish,  possibly,  as  they 
peered  in  at  him  through  the  lifted  flap. 

Yes,  this  is  the  answer  to  our  conun- 
drum if  that  answer  is  to  be  expressed  in 
one  word. 

It  is  the  Book  Itself  that  Sells  Itself— 
because  it  is  the  book  that  a  thousand 
or  ten  thousand  or  a  hundred  thousand 
buyers  want  to  buy  at  the  time  it  is 
published.  No  publisher  can  sell  a  book 
that  does  not  come  under  this  defini- 
tion any  more  than  a  glove-maker  can 
sell  a  glove,  no  matter  how  handsome, 
that  is  not  cut  in  the  style  fashionable  at 
the  moment.  Man}-  different  gloves  cut 
on  the  fashionable  lines  will  sell  side  by 
side  in  competition,  for  tastes  in  frills  dif- 
fer. But  no  gloves  modeled  upon  old- 
fashioned  lines  will  sell  now,  no  matter 
how  they  sold  in  the  past,  and  your  novel- 
ist who  produces  to-day  an  imitation  of 

84 


WHAT   MAKES   A   BOOK   SELL 

some  novel  famous  several  years  back 
(and  most  novels  amount  to  that)  must 
not  blame  his  publisher  if  it  does  not  sell. 

Of  course  our  glove  simile  will  not 
carry  long,  for,  after  all,  we  are  deal- 
ing with  art  when  we  deal  with  fiction, 
no  matter  how  crude  its  expression  and 
how  commercial  its  object.  Most  novels, 
of  course,  are  frankly  commercial  in  ob- 
ject on  the  part  of  both  writer  and  pub- 
lisher. But  occasionally  a  publisher  is 
fortunate  enough  to  produce  a  novel 
which  is  also  literature  —  and  the  excep- 
tion smashes  our  generalizations. 

Such  novels  are  destined  to  success, 
greater  or  less  according  to  their  natural 
publics,  entirely  without  reference  to  the 
handling  of  their  publishers.  Now  I  do 
not  say  that  they  would  be  unaffected  by 
such  handling,  for  clever  publishing  may 
bring  fame  and  sales  to  a  Real  Novel 
whole  seasons,  or  even  years,  before  it 
could  have  won  them  for  itself.  But  my 
point  is  that,  if  it  be  really  a  Real  Novel, 
8s 


THE   PUBLISHER 

eventually  it  will  win  them  anyway,  even 
in  spite  of  bad  publishing,  for  that  is  the 
way  of  a  book.  We  all  know  of  instances 
(they  occur  nearly  ever}^  season)  of  Real 
Novels  themselves  setting  the  pace  and 
keeping  their  publishers  puffing  and  per- 
spiring to  stay  even  in  the  tail  of  the  pro- 
cession. 

In  closing,  let  us  sum  it  up,  as  the  par- 
son does  at  the  end  of  his  discourse. 

The  principal  element  in  the  sale  of  a 
book  is  The  Book  Itself.  A  long  way 
after  comes  the  second  element,  the  spirit 
and  enthusiasm  and  genius  of  the  publisher 
as  expressed  through  ever}'  wheel  of  his 
complicated  human  machine.  Still  a 
longer  way  after  comes  the  third  element, 
scientific  though  not  necessarily  volumi- 
nous advertising. 

And  then  come  the  rest. 


Ill 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN  AND  A  DOLLAR  A 
MINUTE 


Ill 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN  AND   A  DOLLAR  A 

MINUTE 

A  FRIEND  of  mine  got  home  in  Septem- 
ber from  a  summer  abroad  and  stopped 
a  couple  of  days  at  the  Waldorf.  At  ten 
o'clock  the  next  morning,  while  awaiting 
a  business  appointment  made  overnight 
by  telephone,  a  card  was  brought  him 
which  bore  an  unfamiliar  name.  A  dap- 
per young  man  of  assured  and  not  un- 
pleasing  address  followed  hard  upon  it. 

"I  want  to  close  up  with  you,"  said 
this  young  man,  "thf"  matter  of  that  set 
of  Creation's  Greatest  Orators  which  you 
discussed  with  Mr.  Darrow  in  Denver 
last  May.  It  was  just  before  you  went 
abroad.  You  expressed  admiration  for 
the  work — as  well  you  might,  being 
some   spellbinder   yourself    (oh,  I    read 


THE   PUBLISHER 

the  newspapers;  I  know  all  about  you), 
but  you  did  not  sign  the  contract  then. 
Hurry  to  get  away  or  something.  I  have 
a  contract  here  —  for  the  half-morocco 
edition.  You  just  put  your  name  there. 
No  —  that  next  line.  Oh,  it's  all  right. 
Not  the  most  expensive,  but  really  the 
most  sensible  working  edition  for  a  busy 
man  like  you.  I  understand,  sir,  —  of 
course  you  don't  want  any  foolish  frills. 
You  're  no  art  collector.  You  want  stand- 
ards. Seven  a  volume — just  a  modest 
price  for  a  really  line  work  finely  bound. 
Good  library  edition,  that 's  all. 

"Eh?  Only  twenty  volumes.  Covers  all 
the  classics,  you  know,  and  right  down  to 
living  times  in  America.  Yes,  the  great 
Englishmen,  too,  —  Pitt  and  all  those,  you 
know.  Sure  thing.  Those  impassioned 
Frenchmen,  too,  —  eh  —  eh  —  well,  you 
know  their  names  better  than  I  do.  You're 
an  orator  yourself,  eh?  Ha!  Ha!  Why 
should  n't  you  know  them?  Of  course. 

"No,  no,  I  don't  want  any  mone3\  Just 
90 


A  DOLLAR   DOWN 

your  signature,  that 's  all  I  want.  That 's 
good  enough  for  me.  Good  enough  for 
anybody  in  these  United  States,  I  'm  think- 
ing. No,  that  line  there.  This  is  the  inked 
pen.    Right  there  — 

"Thanks!  Mr. Darrow  will  have  them 
waiting  for  you  on  your  library  table 
when  you  get  home.  All  right.  Awfully 
glad  to  have  met  you.  Just  keep  my  card. 
You  might  want  a  Shakespeare  or  a  Scott 
sometime  as  you  rush  through  —  or  maybe 
the  Philosophies  of  All  Times.  Fine  set, 
that.  Good-day!" 

My  friend  told  me  that  he  really  didn't 
know  how  it  happened  till  it  happened. 
He  had  been  much  attracted  by  the  books 
the  spring  before,  but  had  decided  that  it 
was  one  of  the  things  he  could  very  com- 
fortably do  without,  after  all.  Though  a 
public  speaker  of  local  note  and  some- 
thing of  a  student,  he  probably  would  not 
reall}^  read  the  books  when  he  got  them. 
He  thought  of  the  numerous  purchases 
he  had  denied  himself  abroad,  for  it  had 
91 


THE   PUBLISHER 

been  an  expensive  year.  How  had  this 
thing  happened,  an3-way?  He  gave  a 
short  laugh,  then  he  started  suddenly 
after  the  clever  salesman.  Down  Peacock 
Alley  he  dashed,  nearly  upsetting  a  large 
and  indignant  Indianapolis  blonde,  swung 
around  a  corner,  short-cut  a  luncheon- 
room,  and  caught  his  man  at  the  side 
entrance. 

"Eh?  Oh, it's  you,"  laughed  the  sales- 
man. "What's  the  matter?  Do  3'ou  — 
do  you  want  the  Philosophies?  Fine  set, 
fine  set,  I  tell  you;  only  nine  a  volume.  I 
have  here  a — " 

"No,  no,"  said  my  friend  firmly;  "not 
another  book;  I  just  want  to  know  some- 
thing." 

"Why,  certainly,  sir.  Anything  at  all. 
What  can  I  do  for  you?" 

"You  can  tell  me  this.  I  got  in  rather 
late  yesterday.  I  came  a  steamer  ahead 
of  my  schedule.  I  had  never  stopped  at 
the  Waldorf  before  and  did  not  register 
till  nine  o'clock  last  night.    I  have  never 


A   DOLLAR   DOWN 

discussed  these  books  except  with  a  man 
in  Denver  whose  name  even  I  did  not 
know.  Now  How?  What?  Why?  How 
did  you  know?  How  did  you  recognize 
me?  I'm  curious.   Tell  me." 

"Oh,  it's  all  in  the  course  of  business," 
said  the  salesman,  lovingly  stroking  his 
signed  order.  "Your  name,  with  a  lot  of 
other  passengers'  names,  comes  off  the 
steamer  by  newspaper  wireless  a  couple 
of  days  or  so  ago.  Naturally  the  New 
York  correspondents  of  the  Denver  papers 
pass  your  name  on  home.  Naturally  one 
of  Darrow's  clerks  reads  it  in  the  home 
papers  and  reports  it  instanter  to  Darrow. 
Now,  I  look  after  Darrow's  New  York 
business,  so  he  naturally  shoots  on  the 
facts  to  me  in  a  night-letter.  I  look  up 
hotel  arrivals  after  breakfast,  spot  your 
name,  hike  up  here  over  my  early  cigar, 
and  naturally  get  your  sig.  That's  all. 
Have  a  drink  ?  Well,  it  is  a  little  early, 
that 's  a  fact.   Good-morning." 

This  lifts  the  curtain  upon  only  one 
93 


THE   PUBLISHER 

kind  of  subscription  book  business.  There 
are  so  many  kinds  that  I'm  not  even 
going  to  catalogue  them.  Some  of  them 
are  new,  and  they  are  all,  even  the  most 
ancient,  highly  modernized.  There  is  no- 
thing more  modern,  in  all  its  moods  and 
tenses,  than  the  subscription  book  busi- 
ness. Yet  after  all  it  is  essentially  the 
same  old  business.  In  every  mood  and 
tense  the  root  form  sticks  out  big  for  all 
observers.  If  I  could  only  say  that  P.  T. 
Barnum  invented  the  subscription  book 
business  it  would  enormously  simplif}' 
this  getting  at  the  essence  of  a  compli- 
cated subject.  But  he  did  n't.  It  began 
many  generations  before  Barnum.  Its 
origin  lies  back  in  the  morning  mists  of 
publishing.  Some  day  patient  investiga- 
tion will  discover  the  man  who  invented 
selling  books  by  personal  solicitation 
and  devised  the  books  to  entangle  his 
fellow-townsman  together  with  the  pat- 
ter to  do  it  with;  and  it's  tomes  to  tracts 
his  name  was  Barnum.  It  must  have 
94 


A   DOLLAR   DOWN 

been  down  that  ancestral  line  that  we 
got  P.  T. 

The  old,  old-fashioned  kind  of  sub- 
scription book  business  still  flourishes 
here  and  there  in  the  far  country  —  the 
kind  you  knew  when  you  were  on  the 
farm,  the  kind  your  grandfather  told  you 
about,  the  kind  Eugene  Field  wrote  his 
wonderful  story  about.  The  other  day  I 
ran  across  a  printed  paper  entitled  In- 
structions for  Agents,  issued  by  a  big  firm 
still  doing  this  old-fashioned  sort  of  thing 
—  one  of  those,  you  know,  which  adver- 
tise that  you  can  make  from  twenty  to 
eighty  dollars  a  week  if  you  '11  only  send 
in  your  name.  The  instructions  were  for 
neophytes  and  the  detail  was  terrifying. 
There  were  instructions  for  approaching 
the  house,  for  the  conversation  at  the 
door,  for  entering  the  house,  for  every 
possible  exigency  in  the  house,  and  for 
getting  out  of  the  house  gracefully  and 
in  good  order. 

Would-be  salesmen  were  especially 
95 


THE   PUBLISHER 

impressed  with  the  necessity  of  finding 
out  facts  in  advance  about  the  people  to 
be  called  upon.  "Inquiries  should  be 
make  delicately  from  house  to  house," 
and  facts  thus  acquired  should  be  con- 
firmed before  using. 

"Never  ask,  'Is  Mrs.  Blank  in?'"  says 
Rule  6.  "Take  it  for  granted  that  she  is 
in  and  that  she  will  see  you.  Simply  state, 
*  Please  tell  Mrs.  Blank  that  Mr.  Dash 
wishes  to  see  her.'  Invariably  give  your 
name  instantly  and  do  not  wait  to  be  asked 
for  it  by  the  servant.  This  is  very  im- 
portant." 

"  After  having  addressed  the  servant,"" 
says  Rule  8,  "  slip  into  the  house.  Don't 
show  undue  haste  or  force  3^our  way  in, 
nor  stand  like  a  piece  of  wood,  waiting  to 
be  asked  to  enter,  or  as  if  you  expected 
to  be  left  standing  outside.  Walk  delib- 
erately into  the  house  as  any  gentleman 
would  who  had  been  in  the  habit  of  paying 
visits.  Some  canvassers  act  very  foolishly 
in  this  respect  and  are  very  awkward." 

96 


A  DOLLAR   DOWN 

"Once  inside,"  says  Rule  lo,  "you 
must  not  stand  in  the  hall  like  a  block- 
head; neither  dare  you  open  the  parlor 
door  yourself  and  walk  in.  But  hang  up 
your  hat  on  the  hatrack  immediately^you 
enter,  and  the  servant  will  alwa3^s  take 
the  hint,  and  ask  you  to  take  a  seat  in  the 
parlor.  She  will  treat  you  exactly  as  she 
finds  you  expect  to  be  treated." 

And  so  on.  The  learner  is  instructed 
to  begin  safely  on  the  weather,  but  not  to 
linger  too  long  in  generalities,  rather  to 
get  down  to  business  by  a  conversational 
path  carefully  chosen  according  to  the 
disposition  of  the  hostess;  and,  once  be- 
gun, carefully  to  avoid  direct  issues, 
which  may  result  in  premature  refusals, 
but  swiftly  and  skillfully  to  steer  around 
rocks  until  attention  and  interest  are 
fairly  won  for  the  book  offered.  Then 
strike  quickly  and  surely  and  hold  tight. 

It  is  true  that,  in  these  piping  times, 
when  the  farmer  runs  his  car  and  his 
daughters  are  up  on  the  best  sellers; 
97 


THE   PUBLISHER 

when  Ibsen  is  discussed  at  the  crossroads; 
when  one  woman's  magazine  alone,  with- 
out counting  a  dozen  of  large  circula- 
tion and  a  score  of  others,  sells  nearly 
two  million  copies  a  month  in  a  land  of 
only  thirty  million  women,  including  for- 
eigners, Negroes,  and  illiterates;  when  a 
school  expansion  of  unbelievable  rapid- 
ity drags  far  behind  the  demand;  when 
boiler-plate  frontier  newspapers  carry 
weekly  book  departments  —  in  these 
amazing  days  the  familiar  crudities  of  the 
old  subscription  business  are  to  be  wit- 
nessed only  in  the  back  waters  of  the 
swift  current  of  universal  cultivation. 

But  other  times,  other  fashions,  and  — 
to  refer  to  Barnum  again  —  "the  people" 
of  all  times,  even  the  most  intelligent, 
apparentl}',  "  love  to  be  fooled."  To-day 
has  its  corresponding  subscription  meth- 
ods. We  are  all  familiar  with  the  "  secret " 
histories  of  courts,  the  advertising  of 
which  suggests  to  the  naughty  mind  all 
kinds  of  mysterious  things  which  it  actu- 

98 


A   DOLLAR  DOWN 

ally  does  n't  promise  and  which,  of  course, 
the  sober,  substantial  books,  when  they 
arrive,  are  found  not  to  contain.  But  peo- 
ple ought  not  to  have  naughty  minds. 
And  we  know  well  the  wonderful  offers 
of  solid  sets  which,  "  because  of  recent 
consolidations  of  large  interests,  we  have 
been  able  to  acquire  at  a  mere  fraction  of 
their  cost,  and  will  sell,  beginning  at  nine 
o'clock  to-morrow  morning,  at  prices 
which  undoubtedly  will  never  be  offered 
again  "  —  for  the  same  cheap  sort  till  at 
least  the  next  week  after. 

But  while  it  has  brought  forth  these 
and  many  other  new  style  subscription 
eccentricities,  this  splendid  age  has  also, 
and  naturally,  developed  several  sub- 
scription forms  which  rank  high  in  pub- 
lishing and  business  estimation.  It  is  the 
easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  belittle  these, 
or  even  overlook  them  altogether,  for, 
naturally,  it  is  the  sham  and  the  fake  in 
every  business  that  attracts  the  public  at- 
tention; but,  amusing  and  fantastic  as 
99 


THE   PUBLISHER 

many  of  these  forms  are,  it  would  be  as 
unfair  to  allow  them  to  color  your  con- 
ception of  the  subscription  book  business 
as  a  whole  as  it  would  be  to  pronounce 
the  entire  clothing  business,  for  example, 
a  sham  because  of  the  picturesque  antics 
of  the  pullers-in  of  Baxter  Street. 

To  these  forms  must  be  given  the  full- 
est consideration,  for  they  constitute  the 
subscription  book  business  of  to-day. 

The  greatest  discovery  of  the  last  two 
decades  is  the  fact  that  the  public  is  hon- 
est. Considering  that  our  jury  system, 
based  upon  the  discovery  that  the  public 
is  unbribable,  is  centuries  old,  it  seenls 
strange  that  knowledge  of  the  public's 
honesty  is  so  recent.  I  suggest  the  fact 
for  the  consideration  of  the  philosophers. 
I  would  like  to  hear  their  reasoning. 

Upon  that  discovery  is  based  the  mod- 
ernized subscription  book  business.  In  the 
old  days  the  agent  would  leave  you  a  vol- 
ume at  a  time  and  collect  the  money  for 
each  delivery.  To-day  the  agent  collects 
loo 


A  DOLLAR   DOWN 

an  original  payment  often  as  low  as  a  dol- 
lar and  delivers  the  entire  set  of  books  at 
once,  the  publisher  depending  upon  the 
customer  to  pay  the  balance  direct  to  him 
in  weekly  or  monthly  installments. 

The  modern  discovery  is  that  the  cus- 
tomer pays  it.  Of  course  there  are  indi- 
viduals who  don't  —  some  who  cannot 
when  the  time  comes,  and  now  and  then, 
very  rarely,  some  who  won't.  But  the 
proportion  of  these  is  found  in  practice  to 
be  so  small  that  the  losses  are  less  by  far 
than  were  the  combined  losses  and  ex- 
penses of  collections  through  agents  by 
the  old  system.  There  results  a  staplerand 
in  every  way  a  simpler  basis  of  business. 
Nowadays  your  publisher,  dealing  direct 
with  his  public,  allows  for  a  small,  calcu- 
lable, and  dependable  percentage  of  loss. 
The  confidence  and  variety  of  to-day's 
business  are  two  natural  resultants.  An- 
other is  to-day's  enormous  distribution  of 
good  literature  in  cheap  form  at  a  much 
lower  margin  of  profit,  a  fact  of  incalcu- 


THE   PUBLISHER 

lable  importance  in  casting  up  the  ultimate 
causes  of  America's  amazing  average  of 
cultivation. 

One  of  these  several  newer  subscrip- 
tion forms,  one  dealing  mostl}'  with  mod- 
ern copyrighted  sets,  deserves  for  several 
reasons  first  consideration.  Because  it  is 
especially  sound  and  reasonable  in  its 
business  foundation,  because  it  is  just  and 
honorable  to  scrupulousness  in  its  meth- 
ods; because  it  deals  in  high-grade  books, 
honestly  priced  and  made  to  stand  many 
years  of  reasonable  service  —  in  a  word, 
because  it  corresponds  in  ideals  with  the 
highest  type  of  trade  publishing,  from 
which  it  differs  chiefly  in  the  method  of 
reaching  the  consumer,  it  must  be  con- 
sidered the  ranking  subscription  business 
of  the  day.  Let  us  grant  it  is  the  off- 
spring of  an  ancient  and  not  too  scrupu- 
lous parentage,  if  3^ou  will;  let  us  grant 
that  some  of  its  brothers  and  its  sisters 
and  its  cousins  and  its  aunts  are  to-da}' 
not  its  social  equals;  let  us  grant  that  in 

I02 


A   DOLLAR   DOWN 

bulk  it  is,  in  the  bosom  of  its  family,  as  a 
single  sheep  in  the  flock;  it  is,  neverthe- 
less, what  general  publishers  of  ideals 
mean  when  they  speak  of  the  subscrip- 
tion book  business. 

And  yet,  in  justice,  we  must  not  give 
the  present  generation  all  the  credit  for 
this  splendid  business  form.  Far  back 
through  past  generations  are  seen  its  fore- 
runners, showing  unmistakably  that,  per- 
haps even  from  the  beginning,  down  the 
genealogical  line  runs  a  strain  of  fine 
dealing  side  by  side  with  that  fantastic 
Barnumesque  strain  which  is  responsible 
for  so  much  that  is  eccentric  and  even 
farcical,  that  is  smart  at  times  to  the  brink 
of  trickery,  in  that  part  of  the  business  of 
the  present,  as  well  as  of  the  past,  which 
has  naturally  most  attracted  the  public 
gaze.  To  show  this,  it  is  needless,  in  this 
paper,  to  go  back  of  the  recollections  of 
many  now  living.  Still  it  was  a  good 
many  years  ago  that  Scribners  sold  Stan- 
ley's "  In  Darkest  Africa  "  by  subscrip- 
103 


THE   PUBLISHER 

tion  in  strict  accord  with  the  highest  ideals 
of  publishing.  Later  on,  Blaine's  "  Twenty 
Years  in  Congress  "  and  Grant's  "  Mem- 
oirs" stand  out  among  the  fine  successes 
of  the  most  honorable  of  subscription 
methods. 

And  these  titles,  too,  will  serve  us  an- 
other purpose  —  that  of  illustrating  that 
principle  of  subscription  selling  that  dif- 
ferentiates it  from  other  book-selling 
methods  and  affords  a  firm  foundation  for 
a  highly  organized,  highly  individualized 
business.  It  is  well  known  that  all  of  the 
books  I  have  mentioned  were  extremely 
successful.  "  In  Darkest  Africa "  mad6 
its  author  independent  for  life.  "Twenty 
Years  in  Congress  "  added  nobly  to  the 
resources  of  the  Blaine  famil}^  Grant's 
"Memoirs"  yielded  what,  in  those  days, 
was  called  a  fortune. 

Yet  I  am  very  certain  that  none  of  them 
would  have  been  more  than  long-lived 
and  profitable  sellers  under  any  other  S3's- 
tem  of  sale. 

104 


A   DOLLAR   DOWN 

The  fact  involved  is  human  negli- 
gence. Few  of  us,  even  in  the  most  tri- 
fling affairs,  will  step  outside  the  set  paths 
of  our  lives  without  compulsion.  You 
know,  yourself,  you  never  would  have 
bought  that  umbrella,  even  under  your 
wife's  constant  remindings,  unless  com- 
pelled by  a  midday  shower.  And  you 
know  also  —  everybody  knows — that 
bossism  in  this  land  could  be  crushed  out 
at  one  overwhelming  blow  if  the  men  who 
are  opposed  to  boss  rule  would  take  the 
trouble  to  walk  round  the  corner  and  reg- 
ister, or,  having  registered,  to  walk  round 
the  corner  and  vote.  A  study  of  the  fig- 
ures of  any  ordinary  election  in  the  last 
half-decade  will  prove  that.  Now  this 
could  all  be  cured  and  the  political  front 
of  the  nation  changed  in  a  day  if  a  system 
of  calling  at  the  voter's  residence  for  his 
vote,  instead  of  requiring  him  to  call  at 
the  polling-booth  to  present  his  vote, 
should  be  adopted.  I  think  every  observ- 
ing citizen  will  agree  with  me  in  that. 
105 


THE   PUBLISHER 

I  suggested  it  once  to  a  "  spoils  "  leader, 
whom  I  knew  well  at  the  time,  and  he 
shivered.  Then  he  grinned  and  said, 
"My  boy,  thank  God  it's  impossible." 

But,  though  impossible  in  politics,  it  is 
precisely  what  the  subscription  book  pub- 
lisher puts  into  profitable  practice.  He 
knows  that  of  say  twenty  people  who  are 
probable  purchasers  of  a  given  work,  only 
one  will  take  the  trouble  to  go  to  the 
bookstore  and  buy;  but  half  a  dozen,  say, 
will  buy  if  the  bookstore  comes  to  them. 
There  is  only  required,  then,  a  practicable 
plan  under  which  it  will  be  profitable  to 
send  the  bookstore  on  a  house-to-house 
tour.  That,  in  a  word,  is  the  subscription 
book  business. 

The  financial  plan  is  simple.  There  is 
only  one  price,  the  retail  price,  from 
which  no  discounts  are  made.  The  pub- 
lisher divides  his  receipts  among  these 
items:  — 


1 06 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

Manufacturing 20  per  cent 

Selling  commission     .     .     .     .  25  ^ 

Author's  royalty 10 

Cost  of  doing  business,  includ- 
ing depreciation,  collections, 

and  losses 30 

Profit 15 

100 

Of  course  there  are  variations  from 
this.  Sometimes,  especially  with  large 
press  runs,  the  manufacturing  cost  is 
lower,  and,  with  everything  else  constant, 
the  profit  is  better.  Sometimes  the  author 
has  to  have  a  little  more  royalty,  and 
sometimes  depreciations,  collections,  and 
losses  add  several  points  to  the  "  Cost  of 
doing  business."  The  average,  however, 
at  least  for  such  houses  as  Scribners, 
Harpers,  Houghton  Mifflin  Company, 
Putnam,  Little,  Brown  &  Company,  and 
a  few  others,  stays  close  to  the  figures 
quoted. 

As  in  every  other  business,  of  course, 
a  certain  bulk  is  necessary  to  realize  this 
condition.  Many  book  sets  require  several 
107 


THE   PUBLISHER 

years  of  activity  to  offset  the  heavy  orig- 
inal investment  and  get  on  their  financial 
legs,  so  to  speak;  and  during  this  period 
the  average  of  business  is  kept  up  by 
sets  formerly  published  —  the  backlog,  as 
publishers  sometimes  call  it.  Many  am- 
bitious book  agents,  who  lose  their  all 
or  their  friends'  all  in  some  independent 
publishing  ventures  of  their  own,  fail 
because  they  overlook  this  great  fact 
of  bulk.  A  well-established,  well-bulked 
subscription  business  of  the  first  class  of 
quality  is,  under  wise  management,  one 
of  the  safest  and  most  satisfactory,  though 
not  one  of  the  most  profitable,  businesses 
in  existence.  But,  like  every  other  fine, 
sound  business,  it  becomes  fine  and  sound 
only  by  growing.   It  is  no  mushroom. 

Many  who  are  knowing  in  subscription 
books  of  other  kinds  will  question  the 
item  of  25  per  cent  commission  to  agents; 
they  will  quote  commissions  of  40  per 
cent  or  more.  But  not  in  this  class  of 
business.  As  we  shall  see  presently,  a 
108 


A  DOLLAR   DOWN 

biggdr  commission  to  general  agents  goes 
only  with  cheaper  production  and  higher 
prices. 

This  ideal  trade,  which  unites  the  best 
possible  quality  of  material  with  prices 
low  enough  to  represent  value,  cannot 
afford  the  luxury  of  general  agents. 

But  how,  you  with  the  old-fashioned 
general-agent  idea  in  your  head  may  ask, 
how  does  this  new-fangled  subscription 
publisher  reach  his  market,  covering,  as 
it  does,  the  whole  United  States?  So 
great  a  territory  cannot  adequately  be 
reached  from  one  centre. 

This  brings  us  to  quite  a  new  person- 
age in  subscription  book-selling;  one  who 
lived  a  generation  ago  only  in  isolated, 
distinguished  examples,but  without  whom 
many  thousand  of  regular  and  consider- 
able book-buyers  of  to-day  would  not  be 
book-buyers  at  all. 

Let  me  present  to  you  the  new-style 
book  agent! 

I  note  your  surprise. 
109 


THE   PUBLISHER 

No,  he  Is  not  uncouth,  nor  ill-mannered, 
nor  over-talkative,  nor  insolent;  nor  does 
he  back  you  into  a  corner  and  force  you 
to  buy  a  book  you  don't  want  as  the  only 
means  short  of  calling  the  police  (which 
is  alwa3'S  unpleasant)  for  getting  him  out 
of  your  house.  On  the  contrary,  he  is  a 
courteous,  well-groomed,  energetic  busi- 
ness man  who  has  a  large  and  growing 
list  of  regular  customers  and  has  n't  time 
to  fool  with  anybody  not  ready  to  do 
business  with  reasonable  dispatch.  He  is 
quick-spoken,  a  happy  talker,  expert  in 
books  and  literature,  and  well  informed 
on  general  topics.  He  specializes,  usually, 
in  the  publications  of  one  or  possibly  two 
subscription  publishers  whose  kind  of 
books  fit  his  particular  trade,  but  he  is 
ready  to  supply  his  customers  with  every- 
thing they  may  want  from  any  publishing 
house  in  creation. 

He  is,  in  short,  the  traveling  bookstore. 
He  is  a  modern  institution  growing  out  of 
an  extremely  modern  need.  His  custom- 
no 


A   DOLLAR  DOWN 

ers  are  chiefly  men  too  Immersed  in  busi- 
ness, and  women  too  occupied  in  family 
or  social  or  charitable  or  club  affairs,  to 
take  the  time  necessary  for  finding  the 
books  which  are  nevertheless  necessary 
to  them.  Their  book  agent  studies  them 
and  their  needs  and  is  able  to  get  at  once 
to  the  point  with  them.  Each  subscription 
set  as  it  comes  out  he  mentally  apportions 
to  Mr.  Ex  or  Mrs.  Zee,  according  to  their 
known  tastes,  and  he  does  not  waste  their 
time  nor  his  when  they  meet.  He  is  also 
up  on  current  books,  and  is  able  to  inform 
his  customer  of  many  bookish  things  of 
which  the  customer  has  heard  something 
and  wants  to  know  more.  Whether  the 
meeting  is  of  his  seeking  or  his  custom- 
er's, he  rarely,  if  he  is  skillful,  leaves  the 
office  or  the  house  without  a  sale,  and 
sometimes  he  carries  with  him  a  bunch 
of  miscellaneous  commissions  besides. 

As  I  have  said,  this  most  useful  book 
agent,  this  —  mirabile   dictu  —  welcome 
book   agent,  is   the  product  of   a  need. 
Ill 


THE   PUBLISHER 

This  need  is  in  turn  the  product  of  a  com- 
plex and  wealthy  age.  And,  in  turn,  the 
phenomenal  growth  of  our  complexity 
and  wealth  is  bearing  a  steadily  increasing 
harvest  for  the  fast-growing  ranks  of  the 
agents.  A  really  good  agent,  by  the  wa}', 
can  make  four  or  five  thousand  dollars  a 
year.  The  majority,  probably,  net  from 
two  to  four  thousand,  and  here  and  there 
an  exceptional  man  nears  six.  Few 
women  are  successful  in  this  field,  so  far, 
probably  for  the  reason  that  success  de- 
pends upon  creating  a  reputation  as  an 
expert,  which  women,  though  they  may 
be  experts,  still  find  it  difficult  to  do. 

These  agents  are  found,  of  course, 
mostly  in  the  centres  of  wealth.  New 
York  has  many  of  them,  but  not  many 
more  than  Chicago.  To-day  they  are 
found  in  every  city  of  the  first  or  second, 
and  sometimes  even  of  the  third  magni- 
tude. From  these  centres  they  extend 
their  operations  throughout  the  suburbs 
and  to  neighboring  towns.  Some  have  de- 

112 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

veloped  business  in  far  separated  centres, 
and  spend  much  of  their  time  on  trains. 
Others  favor  all  country  routes.  Many  do 
a  good  deal  of  business  by  mail,  only 
visiting  their  distantly  separated  custom- 
ers once  or  twice  a  year  to  keep  in  touch. 

Thus,  in  one  way  or  another,  the  coun- 
try is  pretty  well  taken  care  of  by  the  in- 
dependent book  merchants,  and  it  remains 
with  the  publisher  to  establish  and  main- 
tain relations,  not  with  the  public  but  with 
the  book  agents.  This  he  does  by  con- 
stant correspondence.  It  is  also  to  the 
interest  of  every  book  agent  who  deals 
with  a  good  class  of  personal  customers 
to  keep  in  good  standing  with  the  pub- 
lishers who  issue  their  kind  of  high  stand- 
ard sets. 

Eventually,  by  a  process  of  natural 
selection,  each  agent  settles  down  chiefly 
to  one  publisher — at  least  to  the  extent 
of  being  known  as  a  Scribner  man  or  a 
Houghton-Mifflin  man,  and  so  on;  but 
there  is  no  contract  or  binding  relation 
113 


THE   PUBLISHER 

either  wa}^  The  publisher  assumes  little 
risk  dealing  in  this  way  through  long- 
tried  agents.  And  he  is  under  no  neces- 
sity to  advertise  —  though  he  often  does 
advertise  with  the  hope  of  provoking  the 
customers  of  other  publishers'  agents  to 
ask  to  see  his  sets.  Sales  are  made  from 
sample  copy  or  dummy,  and  the  pur- 
chaser's standing,  if  credit  is  required,  is 
looked  up  through  the  usual  commercial 
agencies  before  any  considerable  risk  is 
assumed.  Yes,  it  is  a  safe  and  comfort- 
able business. 

And  then  there  is  the  occasional  lim- 
ited edition.  This  often  helps  out  well.  On 
getting  out  a  new  set  to  be  sold  at  two 
dollars  a  volume,  for  instance,  the  pub- 
lisher sometimes  will  first  print  from  the 
same  plates  a  special  edition  of  a  hundred 
and  fifty  or  two  hundred  sets  on  fine, 
hand-made  paper,  and  have  each  volume 
specially  bound  and  a  little  more  freel}' 
illustrated.  Perhaps  he  will  insert  in  the 
first  volume  an  introduction  by  some 
114 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

celebrity,  or  get  the  author  to  give  up  a 
few  days  to  writing  his  autograph  in  all 
the  volumes.  This  edition,  which  really 
will  cost  less  than  a  dollar  more  a  volume 
than  the  regular  subscription  edition,  he 
will  sell  for  five  or  six  or  seven  dollars 
to  a  discriminating  body  of  collectors, 
and  will  make  enough,  perhaps,  to  pay  for 
the  plates  of  the  whole  edition.  This  can 
only  be  done  occasionally  with  some  set 
that  offers  real  value  from  a  collector's 
point  of  view.  But  it  is  often  enough  pos- 
sible to  be  helpful  in  the  year's  business. 
But  this  pretty  business  in  copyrighted 
sets  is  as  an  apple  in  its  barrel  to  the  great 
bulk  of  what  many  call  the  "regular" 
subscription  businesses,  the  adjective  in 
this  case  indicating  merely  size.  The 
"main  stream"  of  the  business  would  be 
more  nearly  descriptive.  Of  this  "regu- 
lar" kind,  the  vast  business  in  which  the 
late  Peter  Fenelon  Collier  amassed  his 
large  fortune  years  before  he  developed 
"Collier's  Weekly"  into  a  book-order 
115 


THE   PUBLISHER 

magazine  is  probably  the  best  example. 
Mr.  Collier  built  up  a  selling  machine  of 
wonderful  size  and  complexity.  He  di- 
vided the  United  States  into  departments 
under  able  salaried  heads  and  subdivided 
these  again  under  commission  agents  till 
there  was  no  village  where  Collier's  sets 
were  not  offered.  He  published  sets  of 
all  standard  authors  which  no  longer  re- 
quired royalty  payments,  and  so  effective 
was  his  machine  that  it  was  said  that  edi- 
tions of  a  hundred  thousand  sets  were  not 
uncommon  on  his  presses. 

But,  of  course,  under  the  old  condi- 
tions, operating  through  general  agents, 
whether  commissioned  or  salaried,  and 
with  all  the  expensive  machinery  of  a 
great,  continent-wide  business  mechan- 
ism, lower  costs  and  higher  prices  must 
be  the  rule.  And  yet,  at  that,  with  the 
help  of  long  press  runs,  no  royalties  and 
the  saving  of  the  printer's  profit,  good, 
serviceable  library  sets  can  be  marketed 
at  fair  subscription  prices. 
ii6 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

There  are  hundreds  of  businesses  of 
this  kind  in  the  countr}'  now,  and  many 
of  them  are  highly  prosperous.  There  has 
developed,  out  of  the  vast  size  of  the  coun- 
try, a  system  of  interchanging  selling  fa- 
cilities among  houses  far  separated  which 
has  proved  exceedingly  effective.  It  is 
known  as  the  general  agency  system,  and 
does  away  with  the  need  of  each  house 
covering  the  same  territory  with  its  own 
expensive  business  machinery. 

For  instance,  Smith  &  Company  in  New 
York  have  invested  a  good  deal  of  money 
in  their  profusely  illustrated  twelve-vol- 
ume set  of  "  The  Men  Who  Made  Amer- 
ica." Already  they  have  worked  up  in  the 
years  a  highly  effective  selling  machine 
covering  the  rich  and  extensive  territory 
tributary  to  New  York.  But  to  sell  enough 
of  this  set  to  make  it  worth  the  while  re- 
quires, in  the  face  of  to-day's  keen  com- 
petition, a  field  of  operation  as  big  as 
America.  So  they  arrange  with  Jones  & 
Company,  of  Chicago,  who  have  devel- 
117 


THE   PUBLISHER 

oped  an  equally  effective  selling  machine 
in  their  own  territory,  with  Robinson  & 
Company,  of  Louisville,  who  also  have 
their  local  selling  machine,  and  with 
many  others  until  they  have  covered  the 
countr}',  that  these  firms  shall  handle 
"The  Men  Who  Made  America"  for 
them,  each  in  his  own  territory. 

To  these  other  concerns  which,  for  sell- 
ing purposes,  are  called  general  agents 
they  give  a  commission  of  forty  per  cent, 
or  even  sometimes  more;  for  the  general 
agents,  of  course,  must  find  a  profit  left 
for  themselves  after  paying  their  own 
house-to-house  agents  the  usual  selling 
commission  of  twenty-five  per  cent. 

But  Jones  &  Company  and  Robinson  & 
Company  and  many  of  the  others  are  also 
publishers,  and  they  in  turn  employ  Smith 
&  Company  as  general  agents  for  selling 
sets  of  their  own  publishing  in  New  York 
territory. 

There  are  very  many  of  these  busi- 
nesses, which,  for  all  their  working  to- 
ii8 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

gether,  are  nevertheless  keenly  competi- 
tive, and  this  competition,  added  to  the 
swift  growth  of  public  discrimination,  has 
served  to  clarify  and  very  considerably 
purify  a  vast  business  which,  in  earlier 
years,  sadly  needed  the  process  that  the 
late  decade  and  a  half  has  applied.  In 
this  connection,  one  publisher  of  long  ex- 
perience said  to  me  the  other  day:  — 

"  The  whole  fact  of  the  matter  is  that, 
up  to  ten  years  ago,  they  'd  buy  anything. 
I  'm  not  exaggerating  —  anything  at  all. 
It  was  too  easy.  But  now,  if  you  want  to 
make  money,  you  've  got  to  give  bigger 
value  than  anybody  else  and  at  skin-tight 
prices  at  that.  Yes,  sir,  it 's  getting  to  be 
a  harder  game  every  year.  At  the  same 
time  the  market  is  getting  bigger." 

This  class  of  business  necessarily  con- 
stitutes the  bulk  of  the  so-called  subscrip- 
tion book  trade.  There  are  hosts  of  these 
publishers,  big  and  little.  Some  of  them 
are  in  the  business  for  many  years,  others 
enter  spectacularly,  overrun  themselves 
119 


THE   PUBLISHER 

in  a  few  ill-advised  seasons,  and  disap- 
pear. It  is  an  easy  business  to  get  into,  for 
you  can  hire  plates  if  you  want  to,  at  no 
great  cost.  Many  printers  own  plates  of 
the  standard  sets,  having  either  taken 
them  over  from  some  meteoric  publisher 
who  left  them  in  their  hands  when  his 
light  went  out,  or  having  made  them  for 
themselves  in  slack  times.  There  really  is 
no  business  easier  to  get  into  —  which  is 
one  reason  why  so  many  rush  into  it  and 
drop  out  again.  In  short,  it  is  the  same 
old  story.  There  is  a  sound,  profitable 
business  in  subscription  publishing,  as  in 
trade  publishing,  for  publishers,  but  no^ 
for  amateurs,  bunglers,  experimenters, 
and  speculators. 

The  same  is  true  of  every  other  busi- 
ness, from  restauranting  to  bond-selling. 

The  "regular"  subscription  publish- 
er's financial  problem  is  easily  calculated 
from  the  preceding  table  of  the  copyright 
publisher's  scheme.  Look  back  at  that 
and  remember  that,  on  account  of  deal- 


A   DOLLAR  DOWN 

ing  with  general  agents,  he  must  increase 
the  commission  item  to  forty  or  fifty  per 
cent.  Against  this,  he  saves  ten  per  cent 
royalty  by  selling  non-copyrighted  sets 
only.  The  rest  he  must  save  out  of  man- 
ufacturing cost,  which  is  easier  than  it 
seems  because  his  sales  are  much  larger 
and  his  press  runs  bigger.  Besides,  he 
raises  the  retail  price.  He  has  to. 

Out  of  this  multiplicity  of  publishing 
come  these  wonderfully  advertised  sales 
in  the  department  stores  from  time  to 
time,  as  well  as  the  cut-rate  bookstores 
that  sprout  on  all  corners  like  mushrooms, 
and  as  quickly  pass  away.  The  time  was 
that  subscription  book  publishers  were 
few  enough  to  enable  them  to  "  keep  some 
kind  of  tabs"  on  the  general  situation 
from  stocks  to  market.  What  each  one 
was  doing  was  known,  in  a  general  way, 
to  the  others,  and  there  came  to  be  some- 
thing like  concerted  action.  It  was  recog- 
nized that  it  was  advisable  to  keep  sub- 
scription books  out  of  the  trade  market 

121 


THE   PUBLISHER 

for  two  reasons,  first,  to  keep  alive  the 
public  notion  of  a  sort  of  exclusiveness, 
and,  second,  to  maintain  unbroken  the 
rate  of  prices  established  in  the  years  for 
this  kind  of  book. 

These  efforts  were,  for  years,  highly 
successful.  Amateurs  and  speculators 
were  few  in  number,  and  their  small 
stocks,  when  they  failed,  were  absorbed 
too  quickly  to  be  a  menace.  Occasionally 
large  failures  upset  the  equanimity  of  the 
trade,  but  this  is  a  big  country  and  the 
danger  soon  passed. 

It  was  the  panic  that  finally  upset  cal- 
culations and  produced  a  new,  or  rather 
a  changed,  order.  In  the  money  tight- 
ness, business  practically  stopped  for 
many  months.  But  the  publishers  were 
heavil}'  stocked.  Concerted  efforts  were 
made  to  keep  the  surface  unbroken,  but 
it  could  n't  be  done.  One  after  another 
many  publishers,  pushed  for  cash,  had  to 
let  some  or  all  of  their  stock  go  to  the  de- 
partment stores  to  bring  what  it  would. 


A   DOLLAR   DOWN 

And  here  came  the  surprise.  In  this 
new  market  subscription  sets  found  an 
excellent  welcome  at  prices  only  a  frac- 
tion of  their  former  prices  —  but  showing 
a  profit  nevertheless.  And,  though  the 
department  store  public  absorbed  vast 
quantities  of  the  stuff  and  cried  for  more, 
the  regular  subscription  public,  just  as 
soon  as  business  resumed,  bought  freely 
again  at  the  same  old  subscription  prices. 

This  is  certainly  a  queer,  impulsive, 
unthinking  public.  Yes,  I  'm  suspecting 
Barnum  was  right,  after  all. 

Behold  the  era  of  bankrupt  publishers^ 
sales  long  after  the  panic  and  its  miser- 
able after-throes  are  over  and  forgot. 

Oh!  but  you  say,  I  've  seen  these  sales 
every  year  now  for  many  years.  That  is 
quite  true.  There  are  always  subscription 
failures,  and  the  stocks  are  alwa3's  com- 
ing on  the  market  —  but  never  before  was 
anything  like  this.  And  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  nothing  like  it  will  ever  be  again! 

It  is  all  —  that  is,  this  multiplicity  of  it 
123 


THE   PUBLISHER 

these  last  several  years — the  miserable  re- 
sult of  one  now  celebrated  speculation  and 
its  spectacular  collapse.  The  speculator 
had  no  very  large  capital,  but  he  had  some. 
He  also  had  a  colossal  faith  in  the  abilit}' 
of  the  public  to  absorb  cheap  books.  So 
he  ordered  in  profusion  sets  of  nearly 
ever3'thing  he  could  find  plates  of,  and 
he  made  new  plates  of  a  lot  more.  He 
placed  these  books  on  commission  in 
department  stores  the  countr}-  over  at 
attractive  prices.  Then  he  awaited  results. 
His  mistake  was  that  he  overlooked  the 
subscription  basic  principle  —  he  asked 
his  customers  to  go  to  the  store  instead 
of  sending  the  store  to  them.  The  results 
were  good,  all  right,  but  they  were  noth- 
ing to  our  speculator's  expectations  — - 
and  his  business  calculations  were  based 
on  his  expectations.  A  myriad  of  printers 
and  binders  had  to  be  paid  and,  compared 
with  their  aggregate  demands,  the  tirst 
season's  return,  plus  his  capital,  was  noth- 
ing. The  only  possible  result  followed, 
124 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

and  followed  quickly.  Ever  since  these 
printers  and  binders  have  been  trying  to 
get  their  losses  back  on  that  stock.  They 
have  used  the  department  stores  to  sell 
it.  The  advertising  has  been  of  depart- 
ment store  construction.  Remember  that, 
when  3'ou  are  counting  up  the  subscrip- 
tion man's  sins.  At  least  he  has  n't  that 
on  his  conscience. 

At  the  end  of  each  season  the  still  un- 
sold books  are  carefully  packed  away, 
and,  a  few  months  or  a  year  later,  sud- 
denly reappear  as  the  result  of  an  alleged 
new  "publisher's  failure." 

Thus  has  this  one  publisher  who  failed 
been  made  to  fail  a  thousand  times  in  half 
as  many  American  towns!  And  the  end 
is  not  yet! 

Meantime  it  may  pay  you  to  look  over 
some  of  these  "  bankrupt  publishers  "  sets. 
If  you  want  "  standards,"  there  they  are 
and  to  spare.  The  scholarly  and  literary 
values  are  there,  for  they  are  in  the  text. 
The  bindings  are  nearly  always  irre- 
125 


THE   PUBLISHER 

proachably  plain  with  printed  labels.  It 
all  comes  finall}'  to  a  question  of  taste.  If 
you  are  not  particular  about  clear  paper 
and  good  printing  and  neat  margins,  it  is 
your  grand  chance  —  for  the  prices  are 
highly  attractive. 

Another  and  important  form  of  sub- 
scription book-selling,  this  also  highly 
modernized,  is  differentiated  by  its  title 
of  mail-order  book-selling.  Instead  of 
sending  an  agent  to  get  the  order,  the 
publisher  sends  a  circular.  He  has  to 
make  an  enormously  greater  number  of 
calls,  and  of  course  he  fails  enormously 
oftener  to  get  the  order.  But  when  he 
gets  it  he  has  no  agent's  commission  to 
pay.  It  is  a  precarious  business,  and 
profitable  under  skillful  management.  The 
problem  is  to  write  the  circular  or  the  ad- 
vertisement in  such  a  way  as  to  induce 
the  reader  to  act  on  the  impulse  —  and 
this  requires  great  experience  and  skill. 
Once  the  reader  lays  the  circular  aside 
without  actually  writing  his  acceptance, 
126 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

no  matter  how  strong  his  intention  to  do 
so  later,  the  chances  are  many  to  one  that 
he  will  never  send  it.  And  it  does  n't  pay 
again  to  circularize  the  same  list  for  de- 
linquents. It  is  a  matter  of  shooting  to 
kill  with  the  first  barrel. 

The  mail-order  publisher  has  to  pass 
through  three  doors  to  success.  The  first 
is  his  circular;  it  must  be  exactl}'  right  or 
it  will  not  sell  the  best  book  in  the  world 
even  below  cost.  There  are  very  few  men 
in  the  country  who  can  write  these  circu- 
lars uniformly  with  success. 

The  second  door  is  the  list.  This  must 
be  made  up  of  the  kind  of  people  who 
buy  books,  or  it  is  useless.  A  good  list 
of  large  size  is  a  priceless  possession. 
There  are  lists  which  can  be  sold  over 
and  over  and  over  again  indefinitely  for 
certain  kinds  of  books.  INIagazine  sub- 
scription lists  are  apt  to  make  good  book 
lists,  but  sometimes  they  fail  utterly. 
Publishers  guard  their  lists  zealously. 
The}^  continually  correct  them  and  add 
127 


THE   PUBLISHER 

to  them.  The  class  of  books  they  ven- 
ture is  usually  largely  influenced  by  the 
nature  of  their  available  lists. 

The  third  door  is  the  test.  This  is 
made  by  sending  out  one  thousand  cir- 
culars to  persons  chosen  at  random  from 
a  certain  list.  The  publisher  then  sits 
down  and  waits.  Experience  has  shown 
him  that  the  number  of  orders  he  re- 
ceives from  that  first  thousand  he  will 
average  from  all  other  thousands  in  the 
same  list.  It  is  this  invariable  average  that 
makes  the  mail-order  book  business  a  de- 
pendable business.  If  he  has  a  large  mar- 
gin of  gross  profit,  he  can  go  ahead  on 
returns  of  two  per  cent  —  or  twenty  sales 
out  of  his  thousand  circulars.  He  does  n't 
often  get  much  higher  returns  than  this, 
especially  of  late  years. 

This  mail-order  book  business  is  one  of 
the  most  highl}-  specialized  of  businesses, 
and  there  are  not  man}'  who  continue  to 
succeed  for  a  long  period  of  3'ears.  There 
is  one  New  York  house,  however,  which 
128 


A   DOLLAR   DOWN 

is  reputed  to  have  made  extremely  hand- 
some profits  for  many  years,  running 
its  magazines  always  in  the  interests  of 
the  book  business,  the  purpose  being  con- 
tinually to  augment  its  already  large  sub- 
scription lists  with  the  kind  of  persons 
liable  to  become  regular  book-customers 
later  on. 

"Well,  I  figure  this  way,"  said  a  mail- 
order man  when  I  asked  him  his  business 
basis.  "  Say  the  set  is  that  Smith,  there, 
that  I  offer  for  $15.  Well,  out  of  each 
hundred  orders,  say  I  cancel  ten  on  in- 
vestigating their  financial  standing,  and 
seven  send  the  set  back  when  they  see 
it — for  nowadays,  you  know,  we  have  to 
sell  on  approval.  That  will  leave  83  sets, 
bringing  in  $1245.  Now  let  us  deduct  the 
^  Cost  of  doing  business,'  which  amounts 
to  twent}'  per  cent.  This  includes  collec- 
tion and  losses.  This  leaves  us  $996. 
You  can  count  on  a  dollar  a  set  for  de- 
livery, and  that  out  brings  us  down  to  — 
let  me  see  —  $913.  Now  that  set  cost  us 
129 


THE   PUBLISHER 

$4.75  to  manufacture  and  $3.50  to  sell — > 
that  is,  to  circularize.  Subtract  this  and 
there  remains  a  profit  of  $237.25.  That 
is  n't  so  bad  as  some  businesses  you  know, 
is  it?" 

A  slight  variation  from  this  substitutes 
magazine  advertising  for  circularizing. 
Sometimes  both  are  done  with  the  same 
set.  A  very  conspicuous  recent  instance 
of  the  advertised  set  is  the  eleventh  edi- 
tion of  the  Encyclopcedia  Britannica^ 
which  was  presented  to  the  American 
public  wholly  by  advertising,  the  first 
appropriation  for  which  was  $300,000. 
The  ninth  edition  of  the  same  work,  pub- 
lished some  years  ago,  affords  the  finest 
possible  comparison  of  trade  and  sub- 
scription sellingfor  certain  kinds  of  books. 
It  was  started  in  England  b}'  trade  meth- 
ods only,  and  in  due  time  reached  a  sale 
of  ten  thousand  sets.  A  firm  of  American 
subscription  men  then  went  to  London 
and  secured  the  right  to  sell  it  in  Amer- 
ica. They  organized  a  machine  covering 
130 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

the  country  and  in  a  very  short  time  sold 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  sets  in 
America  alone.  Later  on  the  English 
publishers  adopted  the  American  sub- 
scription method  in  Great  Britain  and 
immediately  sold  many  times  their  orig- 
inal British  sale. 

Of  all  subscription  book  methods,  how- 
ever, the  most  intensely  modern,  and  the 
most  surprising  in  its  results,  is  the  won- 
derful distribution  of  books  of  sound  worth 
at  practically  cost  price  which  is  inciden- 
tal to  the  subscription  schemes  of  cer- 
tain magazines.  A  conservative  estimate 
places  the  number  of  volumes  so  distrib- 
uted, practically  without  profit  to  the 
publisher,  at  six  or  seven  million  a  year. 

Not  that  these  magazines  are  doing 
this  great  educational  work  in  any  spirit 
of  benevolence.  Not  a  bit  of  it.  None  of 
their  editors,  publishers,  and  owners  that 
I  know  are  in  the  least  inspired  (I  hope 
they  will  forgive  me)  by  any  nobler  mo- 
tive than  circulation  for  their  magazines, 
131 


THE   PUBLISHER 

circulation  meaning  to  them  merely  more 
advertising  at  better  prices.  But  the  lack 
of  altruism  in  these  gentlemen  (whose 
business  affairs  do  not  in  the  least  con- 
cern 3-ou  and  me  except  in  their  relations 
to  book  distribution)  does  not  vitiate  the 
civilizing  fact  that  their  desire  for  circu- 
lation is  the  cause  of  the  distribution  of 
millions  of  good  books  each  year,  princi- 
pally through  the  country  districts  and 
always  to  people  of  small  or  moderate 
income,  at  prices  which  no  business 
agency  requiring  a  cash  profit  could  af- 
ford, and  which  no  benevolent  agency 
could  raise  the  means  for;  and  that  this 
great  and  growing  distribution  in  compe- 
tition with  the  cheap  book  business  of  all 
sorts  throughout  the  country  maintains 
a  firm  depressing  finger  upon  prices  — 
all  of  which,  b}^  the  wa}',  is  greatly  more 
to  the  advantage  of  the  public  than  of  the 
publishers. 

For  the  sake  of  clearness  we  must  note, 
in  connection  with  this   magazine   book 
133 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

distribution,  a  confusion  of  terms,  for  the 
word  "subscription"  in  this  instance  re- 
fers to  the  magazine's  subscription, though 
the  books  involved  are,  loosely  speaking, 
subscription  books  from  the  other  point 
of  view  also.  Originally,  subscription 
books  were  those  so  expensive  to  pro- 
duce that  enough  subscribers  to  cover 
the  cost  had  to  be  secured  before  the  ven- 
ture was  undertaken.  Many  books  are 
published  that  way  still  —  chiefly  books 
of  scientific  or  artistic  value,  for  the  pro- 
duction of  which  public-spirited  men  and 
women  combine  their  subscriptions.  The 
University  Press  publications  of  various 
lands  are  largely  of  this  semi-benevolent 
kind.  But  to-day  the  term  "subscription 
book  "  is  badly  overworked.  At  least  four 
different  kinds  of  book  specialists,  each 
widely  differentiated  from  the  others, 
claim  it  as  their  own  and  think  the  other 
fellows  are  n't  talking  English.  Let  us 
leave  their  contentions  to  the  specialists, 
while  we  consider  the  magazine  man's 
^33 


THE   PUBLISHER 

problem   when  he  dabbles  in  the  book 
business. 

Of  course  he  has  a  business  scheme  to 
work  to.  Every  business  man,  even  a 
modern  magazine  man,  must  have  that. 
In  this  case  the  scheme  shows  a  profit  on 
paper  as  large  as  the  actual  profits  of  many 
businesses  —  only  in  this  case  the  profit 
usually  exists  only  on  paper.  The  scheme 
as  it  averages  (on  paper)  divides  the  re- 
ceipts this  way:  — 
Manufacturing  cost  (magazines  and 

books) 25  per  cent 

Commissions  to  agents,  losses  and 

collections 50  » 

Administration  —  branch  office,  sal- 
aries, etc 15 

Profit 10 

100 

A  book  or  a  set  of  books  and  a  year's 
subscription  to  one  or  more  magazines 
constitute  the  offer.  The  retail  price  of 
each  is  stated  fairly,  and  the  price  asked 
is  something  between  that  and  the  actual 
manufacturing  cost. 

134 


A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

An  honest  try  is  made  for  that  ten  per 
cent  profit  and  it  is  sometimes  success- 
ful. But,  as  the  real  object  is  circulation 
rather  than  profit,  the  profit  often  passes 
entirely  in  over-zealous  efforts  at  in- 
creased distribution.  Sometimes  these 
extra  efforts  entail  losses. 

On  the  whole,  the  publisher  is  well 
satisfied  to  come  out  even  on  his  book 
business  at  the  end  of  the  year.  He  has 
increased  his  average  circulation  a  little, 
added  a  little  to  his  gross  advertising, 
and  carried  off  successfully  an  announce- 
ment of  a  slight  raise  of  rate  for  next 
year.  It  has  been  a  good  year,  and  he 
neither  thinks  nor  cares  about  the  two 
or  three  hundred  thousand  volumes  that 
have  passed  through  his  hands  into  per- 
manent homes.  If  he  does  pause  to  regret 
the  large  amount  of  time  and  labor  ex- 
pended on  that  big,  complicated  book- 
distributing  machinery  which  contributes 
no  cash  profit  into  his  treasury,  it  is  to 
dismiss  it  with  a  shrug.  He  has  to  work 
135 


THE   PUBLISHER 

harder  than  some  other  magazine  pub- 
lishers, that's  all.  But  so  long  as  there  's 
success,  what's  the  use  of  regretting? 

But  our  magazine  man  sells  his  sub- 
scription combinations  in  other  ways 
than  through  his  big,  highly  organized 
agency  department.  He  sells  direct  to 
the  public  from  his  own  home  office  by 
circularizing. 

His  problem,  we  will  say,  is  as  fol- 
lows:— 


Fireside  Review,  i  year  .  .  . 
Jones  Monthly,  i  year  .  .  . 
Smith's  History  of  the  Nations. 

Totals  for  the  combination    $7.50         $3-io 

His  offer  is  $4.25  for  the  combination. 
This,  his  elaborate  circular  points  out,  is 
a  clean  saving  of  $3.25,  and  a  handsome 
bargain. 

And  it  is  true.  The  book  alone,  wliich 
is  a  sound  one,  in  fact  one  of  the  standard 
histories,  would  cost,  equally  well  bound, 

136 


Cost 

Price 

delivered 

$3.00 

$1.50 

1.50 

% 

3.00 

A  DOLLAR  DOWN 

more  than  half  that  total  combination 
price  at  the  cheapest  bookstore,  and  the 
magazines  are  two  of  the  best  in  the 
market.  ' 

You  have  noticed  that  the  publisher 
has  a  gross  profit  of  $1.15.  But  that 
won't  last.  It  is  the  selling  and  distribu- 
tion that  cost  the  money  in  this  huge 
country.  So  he  prepares  his  circulars, 
makes  his  test,  addresses  his  lists,  and 
enters  the  mail-order  scramble.  Of  course 
his  overhead  has  been  taken  care  of  in 
the  given  cost  of  his  combination.  The 
balance  must  cover  losses  and  collec- 
tions and  circularizing. 

Can  he  do  it  ? 

To  his  present  live  subscribers,  yes. 
Sold  to  them,  he  could  do  it  for  two 
thirds,  and  reserve  a  safe  profit  of  ten 
per  cent 

But  this  is  not  his  object.  New  sub- 
scribers is  what  he  wants  and  the  only 
thing  he  wants.  So  he  extends  his  opera- 
tions into  new  and  experimental  lists  and 
137 


THE   PUBLISHER 

pays  the  price  of  his  enterprise  in  loss  of 
profits.  There  finally  comes  a  time  with 
the  best  of  ventures  when  he  can  go  no 
further  without  actual  loss,  and  right 
there  he  stops.  He  has  gathered  a  dozen 
thousand  new  subscribers  with  this  offer 
and  he  is  quite  satisfied.  The  additional 
fact  that  he  has  also  placed  a  fine  educa- 
tional work  into  twelve  thousand  homes 
at  practically  cost  does  n't  appeal  to  him 
further  than  to  cause  him  to  note  the 
rapidly  growing  demand  for  books  of 
substantial  worth  and  educational  value, 
and  to  make  additional  efforts  to  secure 
that  kind  for  the  next  try. 

Nor  does  he  overlook  that  gratifying 
advertising  that  has  also  come  his  way 
in  connection  with  the  sale.  His  combi- 
nation has  not  only  got  him  twelve  thou- 
sand new  subscribers;  it  has  also  paid  for 
the  printing  and  distribution  of  six  hun- 
dred thousand  circulars  advertising  the 
name,  fame,  and  contents  of  his  much- 
loved  magazines. 


IV 

PUBLISHER,  AUTHOR,  AND 
THE  DEVIL 


IV 

PUBLISHER,  AUTHOR,  AND 
THE  DEVIL 

"George,  what  does  this  woman  want?" 
asked  the  publisher,  querulously,  looking 
at  a  card  which  the  office  boy  handed 
him. 

"She's  got  some  poems,  sir,"  said 
George,  "and  she  says  you're  to  publish 
'em,  sir." 

"George,"  said  the  publisher  wrath- 
fully,  "how  often  have  I  told  you  that  I 
never  see  people  with  poems  or  short 
stories  ?  All  these  people  and  all  the  first- 
novel  people  go  to  Mr.  Brown.  I  'm  sure 
I've  told  you  that  twenty  times.  Take 
this  card  to  him  at  once  —  and  do  try  to 
remember." 

George,  probably  from  habit,  his  home 
being  across  the  river  in  New  Jersey, 
141 


THE   PUBLISHER 

scratched  his  left  ankle  with  the  toe  of 
his  right  shoe.  He  also  fingered  the  edge 
of  the  publisher's  desk  and  squirmed  — 
but  he  did  not  take  the  card. 

"  Well,"  said  the  publisher  sharply, 
"  don't  3-ou  understand  ?  I  said  you  should 
take  this  card  —  " 

"But  she  said  —  "  began  George. 

"  I  don't  care  what  she  said,"  snapped 
the  publisher.  "  It 's  what  I  say." 

"  But  there  's  somethin'  written  on  the 
back  of  it,"  George  managed  to  gasp. 

The  publisher  turned  the  card  over, 
read  it  and  sighed. 

"  Hang  the  Reverend  Abinadab  Brown 
and  his  talented  parishioner!  "  he  mut- 
tered. "Well,  George  "  —  resignedly  — 
"  bring  her  in." 

For  twenty  minutes  the  publisher  lis- 
tened with  a  hypocritical  smile  to  the 
rhapsodies  of  the  Reverend  Abinadab 
Brown's  latest  literary  discovery,  but  the 
limit  arrived  when  the  lady  exclaimed, 
clasping  her  hands:  — 
142 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

"Why,  I  could  talk  to  you  for  hours 
about  my  poems — you're  so  sympa- 
thetic!" 

The  publisher's  smile  suddenly  turned 
grim;  but  the  poet,  lost  in  contemplation 
of  inner  visions,  did  not  perceive  the 
change. 

"  It  is  time,  I  think,  that  I  did  a  little 
talking,"  he  said.  "I  must  not  mislead 
you  with  my  —  er  —  sympathy;  but  the 
fact  is  that  poetry — even  the  very  best 
—  does  not  sell  in  this  degenerate  age." 

"So  I've  heard,"  she  said;  "but,  of 
course,  it  is  because  this  hard,  money- 
loving  age  does  not  produce  poems  that 
really  penetrate  to  the  human  heart  — 
the  kind,  I  mean,  that  rises  above  mere 
ages,  that  chords  with  the  universal  hu- 
man. Such  poetry  always  will  sell.  Now 
mine,  for  example  —  " 

"  Forgive  me  if  I  seem  brusque,"  inter- 
rupted the  publisher,  just  in  time,  "but 
even  yours  won't  sell." 
^_"  How  caa  you  know  that,"  she  asked 
143 


THE   PUBLISHER 

sharply,  "  when  you  have  not  read  even 
one  of  them?  " 

"  I  know  it  because  I  know  the  market," 
said  the  publisher.  "  We  have  not  for 
some  years  made  anything  that,  in  any  tan- 
gible sense,  could  be  called  money  out  of 
any  volume  of  poetry;  and  more  than 
ninety  per  cent  of  those  published  have 
failed  to  return  even  the  cash  cost  of  pro- 
duction. Other  publishers  have  the  same 
experience.  Publishing  is  a  business  and 
cannot  afTord  the  luxury  of  even  the  best 
poetry.  So  I  'm  afraid  I  shall  have  to  re- 
turn you  your  manuscript  unread  or  keep 
it  for  a  reading  only  with  the  understand- 
ing that  its  chance  of  acceptance  amounts 
to  nearly  nothing." 

"But,"  exclaimed  the  poet  with  some 
asperity,  "  poetry  is  published  neverthe- 
less. Hundreds  of  new  volumes  appear 
in  the  shops  every  year.  How  do  you 
square  that  undeniable  fact  with  the  very 
strange  statements  you  have  just  made? 
If  publishers  lose  money  on  more  than 
144 


PUBLISHER   AND  AUTHOR 

ninety  volumes  of  poetry  out  of  every 
hundred  why  do  they  go  on  publishing 
them?  Tell  me  that.  Are  publishers  such 
fools?" 

"  I  did  not  say  the  publishers  lost  the 
money,"  was  the  reply;  "but  it  is  lost 
just  the  same." 

"Who  loses  it?"  This  explosively. 

"Once  in  a  while  the  publisher,"  was 
the  reply;  "but  usually  the  poet." 

"The  poet!  How  so?" 

"  Simply  because  the  poet  pays  the  costs 
of  publication  whenthe  publisher  declines 
to.  It  may  be  a  sad  comment  on  our  times, 
or  it  may  not,  according  to  the  way  you 
look  at  it;  but  the  fact  remains  that  peo- 
ple do  not  buy  poetry  in  this  generation. 
You  must  not  blame  publishers  for  refus- 
ing the  loss;  and  the  poets,  rather  than 
lose  all  opportunity  for  self-expression, 
often — and  properly  —  themselves  as- 
sume the  expense  and  the  customary 
losses." 

The  poet's  face  ran  the  gamut  of  ex- 
M5 


THE   PUBLISHER 

pression  during  this  statement,  finally 
coming  to  rest  in  indignant  resignation. 

"Well,  I  knew  this  was  a  degenerate 
age,"  she  snapped,  "  but  I  did  not  know 
that  it  absolutely  lacked  all  the  finer  feel- 
ings." 

"It  does  n't,"  said  the  publisher.  "  On 
the  contrary,  it  —  " 

"But  it  must,"  she  persisted,  "since  it 
is  an  age  without  poetry." 

"  But  it  is  n't,"  said  the  publisher.  "  It 
is  a  sturdy,  masculine,  powerful  age  — 
an  age  of  the  loftiest  as  well  as  the  in- 
tensest  and  hugest  of  achievements.  Onjj', 
just  as  the  architect  and  the  miniature 
painter  both  express  art  loftily  but  in  dif- 
ferent mediums,  so  this  age  works  in  a 
different  medium  than  the  ages  whith 
have  expressed  themselves  in  verbal  po- 
etry. The  poetry  of  to-day  is  expressed, 
for  one  example,  in  machinery.  Our  mod- 
ern epics  are  written  in  record-breaking 
propeller-strokes  across  three  thousand 
miles  of  ocean.  Our  modern  l3Tics  are 
146 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

written  in  the  clouds.  The  Wright  broth- 
ers would  have  been  poets  of  exquisite 
fancy  and  rare  quality  a  century  ago." 

The  poet  sniffed. 

"  I  don't  believe  it,"  she  said ;  "  but  it 's 
a  pretty  idea.  The  '  Atlantic '  will  take  a 
poem  on  that  if  you  don't  mind  my  using 
the  idea." 

"  You  're  quite  welcome  to  it,"  said  the 
publisher. 

"  I  think  I  might  get  twenty-five  dol- 
lars out  of  the  '  Atlantic  '  for  that,"  she 
said  meditatively.  Then,  sharply:  "How 
much  will  it  cost  me  to  publish  my  own 
poems?" 

"You  may  pay  almost  any  price,"  said 
the  publisher.  "  It  depends  on  the  house 
you  go  to  and  the  style  of  publication. 
In  our  own  case,  we  simply  reverse 
ordinary  methods.  Commonly  the  pub- 
lisher pays  costs,  assumes  risks,  and  takes 
profits,  paying  the  author  a  percentage  or 
royalty;  but  by  this  method  the  author 
pays  composition,  paper,  printing  and 
147 


THE   PUBLISHER 

binding  bills,  a  fee  of  several  hundred 
dollars  for  our  trouble  and  the  use  of  our 
name,  and  a  commission  on  sales  amount- 
ing to  our  cost  of  doing  business.  The 
fee,  you  see,  insures  us  a  profit  whether 
the  book  succeeds  or  not  —  and  it  almost 
certainly  will  not.  You  will  then  own  the 
plates  and  stock  yourself,  and  get  what- 
ever receipts  there  may  be  from  sales, 
less  our  selling  commission.  You  prob- 
ably won't  clear,  but  you  may  in  a  few 
years.  Some  do. 

"But  we  don't  care  much  about  this 
kind  of  business,  as  too  many  plugs  — 
excuse  the  vernacular;  the  word  merely 
means  books  that  don't  sell  —  hurt  us 
with  the  trade.  So  your  poems  must  have 
other  reasons  for  acceptance — some  ex- 
ceptionally lofty  quality,  perhaps.  If  we 
don't  take  your  book,  however,  you  '11 
have  no  difficulty  in  getting  it  published. 
If  you  fail  with  one  of  the  regular  pub- 
lishers there  are  concerns  that  make  a 
business  of  this  sort  of  publishing;  but 
148 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

naturally  they  charge  you  much  higher 
prices,  since  with  them  it  is  a  principal 
source  of  income." 

;  This  applies,  of  course,  only  to  poets 
now  writing,  the  "classics" — Whittier, 
Bryant  and  the  rest — being  constant  and 
profitable  sellers;  but,  of  course,  there 
are  exceptions.  The  books  of  Bliss  Car- 
man, James  Whitcomb  Riley,  Cale  Young 
Rice,  the  late  William  Vaughn  Moody, 
Henr}'  van  Dyke,  Josephine  Preston  Pea- 
body  Marks,  and  many  others,  make  some 
mone}'  for  their  publishers,  though  not 
many  make  enough  to  be  really  worth 
while,  considered  merely  as  so  many 
commercial  units.  Their  list  value,  how- 
ever, looms  large.  They  contribute  bal- 
ance, proportion,  quality,  tone.  They 
make  for  literary  repute  and  attract  the 
attention  of  serious  workers  in  many 
literary  fields.  From  several  points  of 
view,  publishers  find  poetry  highly  de- 
sirable. Even  with  their  advantages  many 
publishers  of  standing  rarely  publish  po- 
149 


THE   PUBLISHER 

etry  on  an}-  basis  except  the  regular.  This 
eliminates  from  their  lists  practically  all 
volumes  of  poems  except  those  that  ap- 
pear to  have  a  good  selling  chance.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  several  minor 
concerns  that  make  a  business  of  publish- 
ing books  at  the  author's  expense,  —  often 
at  the  author's  very  heavy  expense,  —  and 
these  are  patronized  by  many  poets  who 
are  unsuccessful  in  placing  their  books 
with  publishing  houses  of  importance. 

Let  us  peer  again,  however,  into  the 
publisher's  sanctum.  He  is  now  talking 
with  a  young  man  whose  first  novel  he 
has  just  accepted,  but  only  after  much 
debate.  The  3'oung  author's  eyes  are  shin- 
ing with  happiness. 

"  But  I  must  warn  you,"  said  the  pub- 
lisher smilingl}^,  "  not  to  expect  too  much. 
I  know  this  is  a  happy  moment  with  you 
and  I  would  n't  be  a  wet  blanket  for  the 
world  ;  but  I  want  your  happiness  to  be 
founded  on  reality  and  not  on  hearsay, 
hope,  or  fancy.  And  so  I  must  not  delay 
150 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

to  tell  you  that  the  sale  of  your  book 
probably  will  not  be  enough  to  pay  you 
for  your  time  and  trouble.  You  must  not 
care  for  that,  however.  You  must  con- 
sider this  your  introduction  to  the  public 
and  consider  yourself  very  lucky  to  get 
the  introduction  with  the  first  novel  you 
write.  Your  real  work  is  all  before  you. 
This  novel  may  sell  well  —  it  may  even 
sell  big;  but  the  great  chances  are  that  it 
will  not  sell  more  than  a  couple  of  thou- 
sand, and  perhaps  not  that.  Now  two 
thousand  copies  at  ten  per  cent  royalty 
amounts  to  only  two  hundred  dollars  — 
and  it  may  not  be  that  much.  You  must 
remember,  however,  that  your  publish- 
ers will  get  practically  nothing  out  of 
it  at  those  sales  —  and  may  even  lose  a 
little;  so  we  shall  be  partners  in  dis- 
tress." 

"But  why?"  asked  the  young  author 

anxiously.    "Why   so   little?    I   thought 

publishers  would  not  accept  any  novel 

that  did  not  look  like  ten  or  fifteen  thou- 

151 


THE   PUBLISHER 

sand  anyway.  Two  thousand !  Why, 
that 's  ridiculous! " 

"It  is  just  as  I  feared,"  said  the  pub- 
lisher. "You  have  the  popular  idea  of 
book  sales.  My  dear  sir,  no  one  can  pos- 
sibly guess  in  advance  —  even  approxi- 
mately —  what  the  sale  of  any  novel  by 
an  unknown  author  will  be  —  the  pub- 
lisher least  of  all,  I  think  sometimes.  Of 
course  we  hope  it  will  be  a  good  success, 
but  we  have  no  expectations;  and  I  want 
you  to  banish  expectations  also.  It 's  safer. 
You  should  be  satisfied  with  a  couple-of- 
thousand  circulation,  because  the  large 
majority  of  first  novels  do  not  sell  more 
than  that.  Then,  if  your  novel  happens 
to  sell  better  than  that,  or  to  sell  really 
well,  you  will  be  agreeably  surprised." 

"  Then  some  first  novels  really  do  sell 
well?" 

"  Certainly,"  said  the  publisher.  "Every 

year  there  are  one  or  two  or  three  that 

sell  exceedingly  well  and  more  than  that 

number  that  sell  profitably.    That  is  why 

152 


PUBLISHER  AND   AUTHOR 

publishers  go  on  gambling  in  new  novel- 
ists —  hoping  always  to  hit  one  of  those 
destined  to  success  and  make  a  connec- 
tion which  shall  be  profitable  for  many 
years  to  come.  Florence  Barclay's  *  The 
Rosary '  was  a  first  novel.  The  publish- 
ers had  no  idea  of  their  good  fortune 
when  they  put  it  out  without  any  special 
acclaim.  That  was  in  October,  I  think. 
It  did  n't  attract  attention  by  its  sales  till 
after  Christmas;  but  then  it  began  to  sell 
so  rapidly  it  was  hard  to  keep  it  in  stock. 
It  did  its  hundred  thousand  in  a  year  and 
is  probabty  three  times  that  by  this  time." 

The  young  author's  eyes  glistened. 

"  How  much  does  Mrs.  Barclay  get  out 
of  it?" 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  the  pub- 
lisher; "but  I  suppose  she  got  ten  per 
cent  at  the  start,  being  a  first  novel;  and 
very  likely  fifteen  per  cent  after  the  first 
ten  thousand.  Then,  when  the  book  be- 
gan to  sell  really  big,  she  probably  de- 
manded a  rise  to  twenty  per  cent.  Her 
153 


THE   PUBLISHER 

publishers  probably  resisted  this  for  a 
while,  but,  fearing  to  lose  her  succeeding 
books,  yielded  —  say,  from  the  fiftieth 
thousand.  Now  —  supposing  it  really  hap- 
pened this  way  and  that  the  book  really 
has,  as  they  say,  sold  two  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  at  full  price  and  fifty  thou- 
sand cheap  edition  —  let  us  see  what  she 
has  made." 

The  publisher  figured  a  few  minutes 
and  announced: — 

"  Sixty-six  thousand  dollars  to  date, 
with  probabl}^  at  least  half  as  much  more 
scattered  through  the  years  to  come  —  to 
say  nothing  of  an  assured  handsome  sale 
of  her  second  novel,  whether  it  be  good 
or  bad,  and  a  reputation  with  trade  and 
public  that  should  make  it  possible  for 
her,  with  industr}^  and  good  judgment,  to 
earn  a  very  pretty  income  for  a  number 
of  years.  Besides  this,  you  know,  she  has 
her  great  success  in  Great  Britain  and  the 
Colonies. 

^  "  Hers,  of  course,  is  the  great  exception. 
154 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

Not  every  year,  by  any  means,  brings  a 
success  so  great  as  Mrs.  Barclay's,  but 
every  year  has  its  group  of  fine  successes, 
though  individually  smaller  in  bulk.  Jef- 
frey Farnol  with  '  The  Broad  Highway,' 
Vaughan  Kester  with  'The  Prodigal 
Judge,'  and  Henry  Sydnor  Harrison  with 
'Queed,'  are  three  out  of  several  who, 
during  this  year,  established  sound  repu- 
tations with  first  novels.  They  are  the 
glittering  exceptions,  however,  and  it 
would  be  unreasonable  for  3'ou  to  expect 
to  do  the  same  —  though,  of  course,  you 
may.  'Mrs.  Wiggs'  was  a  first  novel.  So 
were  many  great  successes. 

"But  the  greater  number  of  novelists 
by  many  times  begin  sound  careers  by 
first  books  of  sound  workmanship  and 
no  success,  followed  by  a  succession  of 
others  of  sound  workmanship  and  slowly 
increasing  success;  until  at  last,  by  proc- 
ess of  growth,  each  reaches  the  degree 
of  popularity  which  his  work  calls  for. 
It  is  rarely  that  a  novelist  comes  into  his 
155 


THE   PUBLISHER 

own  short  of  six  or  eight  years.  Some- 
times, as  in  the  case  of  Octave  Thanet,  it 
is  man}'  years  before  a  fine  commercial 
success  crowns  an  industrious  and  noble 
career;  but  your  success  is  certain  in  the 
end  if  you  pursue  your  career  as  a  busi- 
ness as  well  as  an  art  —  that  is,  if  you 
diligently  set  370urself  to  discover  what 
you  can  do  best,  and  then  do  this  best 
the  best  3'ou  can,  but  always  with  a 
shrewd  eye  to  popularity  with  your  own 
public.  Be  yourself  always,  but  always 
in  a  businesslike  way.  Art  for  art's  sake 
is  an  excellent  motto  for  a  great  genius, 
a  great  protagonist  or  a  dilettante  with  an 
income;  but  art  for  business'  sake  ac- 
complishes the  progress  of  the  world." 

"  You  mean  I  should  write  blood-and- 
thunder  because  it  sells?"  asked  the 
young  author  sarcastically. 

"You  know  I  don't  mean  that,"  said 
the  publisher.  "You  know  I  mean  ex- 
actly the  reverse.  Moreover,  blood-and- 
thunder    does    not    alwa3's    sell.    Good 

156 


PUBLISHER   AND   AUTHOR 

character  novels,  on  the  whole,  are  much 
better  risks.  Above  all  things,  be  your- 
self; but  see  that  you  are  up  to  snufF 
first.  That 's  all.  Whatever  you  can  do 
— whatever  it  is  that  the  combination  of 
point  of  view,  observation,  reason,  inven- 
tion, characterization  and  dramatic  ex- 
pression which  is  in  you  can  accomplish, 
that  is  what  you  must  do;  and,  whether 
you  like  it  or  not,  you  must  accept  the 
degree  of  popularity  it  commands.  Henry 
James  must  be  content  with  his  two  or 
three  or  four  thousand  sale  a  novel,  just  as 
Winston  Churchill  is  happily  content  with 
his  two  or  three  or  four  hundred  thou- 
sand; and  each  is  highly  successful,  be- 
cause he  follows  his  own  diligently  and 
relentlessly  and  with  a  shrewd  eye  to  the 
getting  of  all  that 's  coming  to  him. 

"  Henry  James'  attempt  to  write  '  The 
Crossing'  would  be  as  ludicrously  dis- 
astrous as  Churchill's  try  at  *  The  Sa- 
cred Fount.' " 

"I  suppose,"  put  in  the  young  author, 
157 


THE   PUBLISHER 

"  you  don't  want  to  make  me  an  advance 
against  my  royalties?  I  'm  right  at  the 
bottom  of  m}'  —  " 

"  Frankly,  I  don't/'  said  the  publisher 
hastily.  "  We  are  sure  of  the  quality  of 
your  novel,  but  we  don't  know  in  the 
least  how  it  will  sell  and  we  are  taking 
enough  risk  in  giving  it  its  chance.  We 
are  the  losers  if  it  fails,  you  know  —  not 
you.  Oh,  who  is  this?  Why,  it's  —  it's  — 
Won't  you  excuse  me  now?  Here  's  an 
important  call." 

,  And  the  young  author  passed,  in  the 
doorway,  a  fiction  celebrity  of  first  re- 
pute —  one  of  those  whose  names  are  fa- 
miliar among  the  "six  best  sellers  ";  and, 
looking  back,  he  saw  the  publisher  smil- 
ingly extending  both  his  hands  to  the 
newcomer.  Stopping  to  question  the 
manuscript  clerk,  the  young  author  heard 
through  the  presently  reopened  door  the 
cordial  words:  — 

"And  the  advance?  I  think  you  said 
twenty-five  hundred  down  and  live  thou- 

158 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

sand  on  publication.  That  's  just  as  you 
like,  of  course.  Boy,  here  —  take  this 
memorandum  to  Miss  Jones  and  have 
her  draw  up  a  contract  immediately. 
And — hold  on!  —  tell  the  cashier  to 
draw  a  check  at  once  to  Mr.  Aitch's 
order  for  twenty-five  hundred  dollars." 

More  than  any  other  business  man, 
the  successful  book  publisher  must  be 
many-sided.  Publishers  are  said  to  be 
cranks,  and  I  honestly  believe  the  best 
of  them  —  as  well  as  the  most  of  them — 
are.  Like  everything  else,  it  all  lies  in 
the  definition.  To  the  "  plain  business 
man,"  as  your  single-eyed,  one-lobed 
profit-seeker —  no  matter  what  his  station 
or  calling  or  success  may  be  — is  fond  of 
calling  himself,  every  man  of  compli- 
cated nature  is  impossible  to  understand. 
The  one  eye  can  see  and  the  one  lobe 
comprehend  only  their  predestined  ob- 
ject; and  crank  is  a  convenient  term  for 
the  great  unknown  beyond.  Your  plain 
business  man,  were  he  in  book  publish- 
159 


THE   PUBLISHER 

ing,  would  find  it  simple  enough,  the  only 
question  being  the  amount  of  profit  for  each 
venture.  Your  plain  business  man,  how- 
ever, would  never  be  in  publishing,  or  — 
in  it  by  mistake  —  would  get  quickly  out, 
for  the  plain  business  reason  that  almost 
any  other  business  could  be  made  to  pay 
so  much  better  with  so  much  less  effort. 
The  publisher,  on  the  other  hand,  sees 
many  questions  besides  profit  —  ques- 
tions of  art,  of  literature,  of  reputation,  of 
personality,  of  list  dignity,  of  house  influ- 
ence, for  example;  and  his  decisions  are 
often  slowl}^  reached  —  which  your  plain 
business  man  finds  unreasonable  —  and 
when  reached  are  often  utterly  beside  the 
premises  as  your  plain  business  man  con- 
ceives the  premises.  Hence  he  is  "queer" 
or  "not  wholly  normal"  —  in  short,  a 
crank.  And  if  he  grows  impatient  with 
misunderstanding  he  also  becomes  "diffi- 
cult," and  even  at  times  "  impossible." 
You  sometimes  hear  celebrated  publish- 
ers thus  described. 

1 60 


PUBLISHER  AND   AUTHOR 

The  publisher  is  not  only  a  crank  — 
he  is  also  a  shrewd,  keen-witted,  far- 
sighted,  many-sided  business  man;  he  is 
an  enthusiastic  cultivator  of  literature  for 
its  own  sake;  he  is  an  ardent  encourager 
and  helper  of  artistic  effort  for  the  sake  of 
the  man  that  he  is;  he  is  at  times  a  preacher, 
at  times  a  self-sacrificing  teacher,  and 
many  times  —  at  heart  always,  perhaps 
—  a  gay  gambler,  keenly  enjoying  the 
winning  and  accepting  outrageous  for- 
tune with  a  grin.  If  the  burden  of  odds 
is  against  him,  and  the  margin  of  possi- 
ble gain  one  that  a  plain  business  man 
would  dismiss  as  ridiculous,  what 's  the 
difference?  To  him  the  game  alone  is 
worth  a  gross  of  candles. 

Nor  is  this  all  the  publisher's  reward. 

He  not  only  loves  the  game  —  he  loves 
the  very  tools  of  the  game.  He  loves 
books,  not  alone  for  their  content  but  just 
as  tangible  actualities.  Every  detail  of 
the  book  delights  him.  The  beautiful 
type  page,  the  well-proportioned  margins, 
i6i 


THE   PUBLISHER 

the  clear  printing,  the  neat,  precise  bind- 
ing, like  tasteful  and  stylish  clothes  — 
yes,  the  very  smell  of  the  fresh  page  and 
the  feel  of  the  new,  well-balanced  volume 
in  the  hand  are  a  pleasure  to  him.  He 
has  hovered  over  the  details  of  manufac- 
ture, fussed  about  the  margins,  pondered 
over  the  balance  of  the  title  page;  and 
now,  with  the  first  thousand  just  from  the 
binder  piling  up  on  the  platform,  he  feels 
boyishly  gleeful.  He  strokes  the  smooth 
cover,  admires  the  fitness  of  the  form  to 
the  contents,  and  then  opens  the  volume 
anxiously,  for  maybe  his  eye  will  fall  at 
once  on  that  error  which,  no  matter  whit 
the  labor,  what  the  care,  some  one  gen- 
erally discovers  —  when  it  is  too  late. 

Yes,  he  loves  books  for  themselves.  He 
surrounds  himself  with  them  in  his  ofhce, 
in  his  den  at  home  —  even  in  his  dressing 
room.  He  loves  to  wander  into  the  stockr 
room  to  see  them  stowed  in  bins  and 
boxes  on  every  side,  each  reposing  in  its 
neat  paper  wrap.  His  greatest  temptation 
162 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

is  to  take  on  the  beautiful  possibility  which 
he  knows  from  the  start  won't  pay;  and  he 
continues  to  dally  with  it  because  he  joys 
in  the  thought  of  the  exquisite,  if  extrav- 
agant, book  it  would  make.  Even  the  dis- 
appointment and  exasperation  over  the 
failure  to  sell  of  some  book  of  much  prom- 
ise is  tempered  somewhat  by  his  satis- 
faction in  having  planned  and  brought 
into  being  so  beautiful,  so  fit,  so  noble  a 
volume.  "  If  I  were  a  rich  man,"  he  whis- 
pers to  himself,  "  it  would  almost  have 
been  worth  the  loss  just  to  have  done  it." 
He  is  not  rich  and  he  cannot  afford  to 
have  those  four  figures  on  the  wrong  side 
of  the  account;  but  —  well,  it's  all  in  a 
publisher's  life. 

One  of  the  greatest  of  his  sources  of 
happiness,  one  of  the  largest  items  on  the 
profit  side  of  his  book  of  life,  is  the  posi- 
tion his  business  gives  him  in  reference  to 
literature,  art  and  learning,  the  affairs  of 
the  hustling,  palpitating  world,  the  core 
of  life;  and,  in  the  same  breath,  the  asso- 
163 


THE   PUBLISHER 

ciations  he  makes  with  the  men  and  women 
who,  in  innumerable  and  widely  diverse 
fields  of  endeavor,  are  doing  this  world's 
living.  I  used  to  think,  during  the  most 
of  my  eleven  3'ears  of  daily  and  weekly 
journalism,  that  the  newspaper  afforded 
the  finest  facilities  —  the  best  reserved 
seat,  so  to  speak  —  possible  for  viewing 
the  game  of  life.  But  I  have  long  been 
convinced  of  my  mistake  in  supposing 
journalism  the  best  seat  for  the  viewing 
of  this  great  spectacle.  It  is  an  excep- 
tional seat,  an  extremely  close  seat,  afford- 
ing extraordinarily  clear  vision,  so  close 
that  the  hand  may  often  be  extended  to 
rend  the  draperies  of  the  passing  actors 
for  revelations  still  more  intimate;  but  it 
is  also  a  side  seat  and  the  angle  is  often 
deceptive.  Often,  indeed,  the  spectacle 
is  badly  distorted.  It  is  at  life's  best  that 
life  usually  is  most  truly  seen,  and  jour- 
nalism usually  views  life  at  its  worst. 
The  reporter  and  the  policeman  enter  the 
house  together.  Mishap,  contention,  mis- 
164 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

fortune,  failure,  disaster,  death  —  these 
are  more  often  the  laboratories  in  which 
the  journalist  studies  life.  The  subject  is 
usually  seen  under  stress  of  emotion,  often 
convulsed  by  emotion. 

Life  is  studied  under  ridicule,  in  stren- 
uous conflict,  in  disorder,  in  woe.  The 
point  of  view  has  its  advantages,  uncov- 
ering unsuspected  depths  and  convolu- 
tions of  motive  and  character;  but,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  not  the  simple,  straightfor- 
ward normal  life  of  work  and  order  and 
happiness  that  the  publisher  sees  from 
his  vantage-point  in  the  very  middle  of 
the  stage  itself  —  life  busy  with  its  art, 
its  science,  its  literature,  its  accomplish- 
ment of  every  sort;  life  sweating  over 
deeds  doing  and  singing  over  deeds  done. 
Life  working  is  to  life  stopped  in  its  work 
as  thousands  to  one;  and,  to  round  out 
his  conception  of  its  fullness, the  publisher 
has  much  less  to  infer  than  the  journalist. 

The  publisher,  then,  is,  in  the  midst  of 
work,  a  worker.  He  is  in  the  midst  of 

165 


THE   PUBLISHER 

life  —  a  part  of  it.  So,  I  grant  you,  is  the 
journalist  —  and  yet  differently.  The  pub- 
lisher puts  his  shoulder  to  the  wheel  and 
sweats  with  the  rest.  He  helps;  and,  be- 
cause his  province  is  helpfulness,  he  is  — 
again  unlike  the  journalist  —  always  wel- 
come. In  the  studio  of  the  artist,  the 
workroom  of  the  novelist,  the  laboratory 
of  the  psychologist,  the  study  of  the  his- 
torian or  publicist,  he  is  a  gladly  greeted 
visitor.  The  returned  explorer  intrusts 
him  with  his  discoveries;  the  statesman 
lays  bare  his  plans.  Everywhere  men  and 
women  who  are  making  life  usher  him 
into  the  inner  chambers  and  lift  the  jeal-s 
ous  coverings  for  his  sympathetic  critic 
cism.  He  is,  indeed,  in  the  midst  of  life 
in  its  realest  and  most  wholesome  aspects 
—  a  helpful  agency  behind  a  thousand 
impulses  making  for  the  world's  good. 
The  rich  companionships,  the  rich  friend- 
ships, growing  out  of  such  a  life  are  in 
themselves  wealth. 

Nor  must  we  overlook  the  occasional 
1 66 


PUBLISHER  AND   AUTHOR 

valued  chance  to  recognize  genius  in 
crude  beginnings  and  to  foster  in  their 
infancies  careers  which  may  wax  great 
with  the  decades  and  make  good  return 
of  profit  and  satisfaction.  The  profits  of 
three  or  four  such  relationships  spread 
over  the  years  sometimes  amount  to  a 
business  of  themselves;  while  the  pub- 
lisher's knowledge  that  he  first  foretold, 
perhaps,  this  triumph  of  genius  and  was 
the  encourager  and  director  of  its  early 
flights  is  a  satisfaction  without  compare. 
Then  there  is  the  building  of  his  list 
—  a  life-work.  The  skillful  proportioning 
of  the  many  parts  which  join  in  the  mak- 
ing of  a  library  of  publications  which 
shall  be,  as  a  whole,  coherent,  sound, 
self-expressive  and  profitable,  is  a  work 
of  real  creation.  Art,  biography,  history, 
fiction,  sociology,  religion,  philosophy, 
science  —  all  the  departments  of  human 
thought  and  accomplishment  are  open  to 
him,  and  most  of  the  world's  workers  are 
at  his  call.  It  is  for  him  to  choose  the 
167 


THE   PUBLISHER 

design  and  material  of  his  structure.  Its 
building,  brick  upon  brick,  each  care- 
fully squared  and  set  with  almost  painful 
precision  in  its  place,  is  a  labor  of  life. 
No  hustling  "modern"  methods  will  do 
here  if  the  structure  is  to  be  beautiful  and 
useful.  The  bull  in  the  china  shop  is  not 
more  ruthless  than  your  so-called  "live 
business  man"  at  work  at  a  publishing 
business,  though  he  is  often  successful 
with  commercial  publishing.  For  related 
reasons,  the  architect-builder  is  usually  a 
single  personality.  Book  publishing  is  es- 
sentially a  one-man  business,  though  the 
wise  publisher  surrounds  himself  with 
strong,  sympathetic  advisers.  Publishing 
by  committee  is  apt  to  be  as  ineffectual 
as  collaboration  in  art. 

Plowever  book  publishing  ma}^  differ 
from  the  purely  commercial  business, 
whatever  departure  it  may  make  toward 
the  professional  or  the  artistic  as  distinct 
from  the  commercial  spirit,  the  financial 
motive  is  not  only  aKva3-s  present  but  is 
1 68 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

even  knitted  into  its  very  fabric.  And 
the  financial  problem  requires,  in  my 
belief,  a  higher  skill  in  this  than  in  al- 
most any  other  business :  in  the  first  place, 
publishing  presents,  from  the  very  com- 
plexity of  its  nature,  an  immensely  more 
complex  and  difficult  problem  than  to 
calculate  a  profit  in  coal,  dress  goods  or 
securities;  in  the  second  place,  the  temp- 
tation to  indulge  in  the  artistic,  the  beau- 
tiful, the  highly  literary,  the  worth-while 
book  in  any  of  a  hundred  fields,  that  is 
not  also  a  profitable  book,  is  constant  and 
insistent. 

The  publisher  finds  himself  most  of 
the  time  under  conditions  which  tempt 
him  to  forget  that  he  is  also  a  merchant; 
which  tempt  him  to  overestimate  the  ac- 
tual market  for  the  really  fine  work  of 
literature.  He  must  be  everlastingly  on 
his  guard;  and,  when  he  deliberately  en- 
ters such  a  book  upon  his  list  because  it 
should  be  published  in  the  interest  of  his 
list's  dignity  or  the  cause  of  progress,  he 


THE   PUBLISHER 

must  offset  the  commercial  error  either 
by  inducing  the  author  to  stand  or  to 
share  the  risk,  or  by  entering  on  his  list 
a  counterbalancing  commercial  venture. 
It  is  a  delicate  undertaking,  particularly 
in  the  early  years  of  a  publishing  house, 
while  the  backlog  is  still  small.  Later 
on,  with  a  superb  list  of  surviving  sellers 
behind  him,  the  publisher's  margin  of 
safety  is  much  greater;  but  by  that  time, 
it  must  be  seen,  with  larger  ventures 
throughout,  big  and  complex  undertak- 
ings on  every  hand  and  a  record  of  growth 
behind  constituting  a  relentless  compari- 
son for  present  and  future  growth,  the 
problem  remains  essentially  the  same  — 
only  on  a  larger  scale. 

Constant  vigilance,  therefore,  is  the 
price  of  success  —  and  constant  personal 
vigilance.  Publishing  cannot  be  deputed. 

"The  trouble  with  this  business,"  said 
a  celebrated   publisher,  "  is  that  you  're 
always  between  the  devil  and  the  deep 
sea.  There  's  harbor  nowhere." 
170 


PUBLISHER   AND   AUTHOR 

"Explain  yourself,"  I  cried.  "Who  is 
the  devil  and  who  the  deep  sea?  " 

"  The  public  and  the  author,  of  course," 
he  replied. 

"Ah!"  said  I;  "but  where  does  the 
literary  agent  come  in?" 

"  You  're  right,"  he  returned  with  a 
grin.  "  I  '11  have  to  revise  my  simile  and 
add  a  third  monster,  for  the  literary  agent 
is  surely  the  devil." 

Thus  will  it  be  seen  that  Grub  Street 
to-day  is  more  fraught  with  uncertainty 
than  the  famous  Grub  Street  of  story;  for 
the  literary  agent,  at  least  in  the  modern 
sense,  is  a  brand-new  product. 

He  is  a  British  invention,  finding  his 
excuse  and  greatest  opportunity  in  the 
adjustment  of  relations  between  authors 
and  publishers  seas  apart,  but  carrying 
his  intervention  whenever  possible  — and 
commonly  in  England  —  into  the  relations 
of  inhabitants  even  of  the  same  city.  He 
is  a  necessity  or  he  would  not — I  had 
almost  said  thrive;  but  he  does  not  really 
171 


THE   PUBLISHER 

do  that.  He  is  often  a  beneficence  to  pub- 
lisher as  well  as  author.  It  is  only  when 
slack  business  or  excessive  zeal  drives 
him  into  forcing  royalties  or  luring  au- 
thors from  their  natural  publishers  in 
order  to  win  a  commission  by  placing 
them  with  others  that  he  becomes  the 
devil. 

His  lot  is  most  unhappy,  for  whatever 
he  does  gets  him  into  trouble;  and  the 
better  he  does  it  the  greater  the  trouble. 
Depending  equally  upon  author  and  pub- 
lisher for  his  livelihood,  he  is  always  at 
odds  with  one  of  them.  In  order  to  se- 
cure clients,  he  must  promise  bigger 
advances  and  better  royalties,  which  in- 
vites the  publishers'  substantial  wrath; 
but  if  he  does  n't  succeed  in  securing 
them  he  is  soundly  rated  by  the  author. 
The  fact  is  that  the  entire  trade  book 
field  is  so  concentrated  that  the  middle- 
man cannot  operate  except  in  a  noon  of 
publicity,  in  which  every  representation 
or  misrepresentation  is  visible  to  all 
172 


PUBLISHER  AND  AUTHOR 

concerned  or  unconcerned.  It  follows 
that  his  course  from  study  to  office  and 
from  office  to  study  may  be  traced  by  a 
wake  of  frothy  profanity.  He  earns  his 
money! 

There  was  a  time  when,  through  a  nat- 
ural development,  the  market  for  fiction 
suddenly  expanded  in  a  fashion  to  make 
publishers  and  book-sellers  almost  lose 
their  heads;  in  fact,  some  of  them  did, and 
lost  a  lot  of  dollars  in  the  process.  We 
all  remember  the  days  of  the  first  sensa- 
tional circulations  and  the  tidal  wave  of 
book  advertising  and  excitement  that  fol- 
lowed it — when  even  sporting  papers 
sprouted  review  departments  and  new- 
book  supplements  were  born  once  a 
week. 

It  was  then  the  literary  agent  entered 
the  book  field  in  a  real  sense.  Previously 
he  had  sold  stories  and  poems  to  maga- 
zines and  Sunday  newspapers  on  com- 
mission; now  he  peddled  novels  among 
publishers  and  moved  into  a  better  flat. 
173 


THE   PUBLISHER 

Publishers  were  eager  for  novels  then. 
For  several  years  they  plunged.  British 
authors  heard  of  it  and  deluged  America 
with  rejected  manuscripts,  and  dry  goods 
clerks  sat  up  nights  on  the  chance  of 
writing  another  "David  Harum."  It  was 
then  the  literary  agent  learned  how  to 
set  publishers  bidding  royalties  and  ad- 
vances against  one  another  for  supposed 
best  sellers. 

A  few  years  later,  however,  when  this 
great  new  public  had  learned  its  own 
taste  and  when  trade  and  authors  had 
adjusted  themselves  to  the  new  condi- 
tions, the  literary  agent  found  life  again 
strenuous.  Caution  reigned  once  more  in 
the  sanctum  and  new  novelists  ceased  to 
command  advances.  Business  must  be 
done,  however,  or  there  would  be  no 
commissions;  so  he  learned  the  trick  of 
detaching  the  successful  author  from  one 
house  to  attach  him  to  another. 

The  literar}'  agent  does  not  thrive  in 
America  upon  commissions  from  Ameri- 
174 


PUBLISHER   AND  AUTHOR 

can  authors.  The  American  author  is 
more  of  a  business  man  than  his  English 
cousin  and  much  prefers  to  manage  his 
own  publishing  arrangements.  Nor  is  he 
so  changeable.  As  a  rule  he  makes  a  part- 
ner of  his  publisher  and  works  amicably 
with  him  year  after  year  for  their  com- 
mon good.  The  English  author,  how- 
ever, is  apt  to  be  suspicious  of  those  hus- 
tling Americans  so  many  miles  away  and 
often  lends  a  ready  ear  to  suggestions 
that  Blank  &  Company  are  not  paying  all 
they  might  be  made  to  pay,  and  that 
some  other  house  might  come  down  with 
a  better  advance. 

And  often  they  do.  Until  recent  years 
England  created  a  much  larger  propor- 
tion of  sound  and  profitable  novels  than 
America;  and,  if  one  must  speculate,  it  is 
safer  speculating  with  the  foreign  pro- 
duction. One  of  the  most  conspicuous 
novels  of  recent  years  was  held,  by  its 
American  agent,  for  a  year  and  a  half 
at  ten  thousand  dollars  advance  against 
175 


THE   PUBLISHER 

twenty  per  cent  royalty;  and,  one  after 
another,  most  of  the  big  American  houses 
examined  it  and  declined  the  risk.  But 
finally  abrave  publisher  risked  it  and  won. 
It  practically  meant  that  he  bet  the  novel 
would  sell  forty  thousand  copies,  which, 
considering  the  author's  former  sales,  and 
the  unsettled  condition  of  the  fiction 
market  at  the  time,  was  distinctly  sporty. 

This  matter  of  big  advances  is  another 
English  institution  as  unwelcome  as  the 
English  sparrow,  and  it  is  his  insistence 
upon  it  that  has  chiefly  caused  the  liter- 
ary agent's  American  unpopularity.  With 
fiction  so  uncertain  a  risk  under  the  best 
of  circumstances,  it  forces  the  publisher 
to  add  the  further  risk  of  a  one-sided  bet 
with  the  author  on  the  sales  of  the  book 
—  in  which  the  author  assumes  no  risk 
and,  even  if  the  publisher  wins,  makes 
at  least  twice  as  much  as  he  does  out  of 
the  joint  venture. 

Consider  the  author  the  producing  de- 
partment of  a  joint  business  of  which  the 
176 


PUBLISHER   AND   AUTHOR 

publisher  is  the  selling  department,  each 
helping  the  other  for  the  common  benefit 
and  dividing  the  profits  and  losses  of  suc- 
ceeding ventures  covering  a  series  of 
years  on  a  basis  fair  to  both,  and  you 
have  the  most  effective  moneymaking  ma- 
chine possible  in  publishing.  Americans, 
with  their  superior  business  keenness,  are 
quick  to  see  this,  which  accounts  for 
the  superior  effectiveness  and  satisfaction 
of  American  publishing  relations  and  the 
small  place  the  literary  agent  occupies 
in  them. 

I  heard  a  publisher  say  to  his  advertis- 
ing man :  — 

"  Don't  spend  a  dollar  more  than  you 
absolutely  have  to  on  Brown's  novel  — 
not  a  cent  even.  Be  under  rather  than 
over.  Let  us  save  every  cent  we  can  on 
this,  for  it 's  the  last  one  we  '11  get.  I 
hear  confidentially  that  he  's  made  a  deal 
with  Harpers'  for  his  next  three  and 
we  're  not  going  to  spend  money  boost- 
ing their  people  for  them." 
177 


THE   PUBLISHER 

This  is  how  changing  often  hurts  the 
author's  interests. 

The  same  publishers  got  out  three  suc- 
cessive books  at  a  loss  for  a  short-story 
writer  in  whose  future  they  believed, 
all  the  while  encouraging  her  to  write  a 
novel.  She  did  so,  and  it  failed  too.  She 
tried  again  and  the  book  sold  twenty-five 
thousand  copies,  making  good  money 
and  well  recouping  all  previous  losses; 
but  the  publisher  said  to  his  advertising 
man:  — 

"Don't  spare  on  I\Irs.  Jones.  Adver- 
tise her  for  the  future  —  not  the  present. 
I  don't  care  if  we  don't  make  a  cent  on  this 
book.  Let  us  make  her,  and  her  future 
will  take  care  of  the  past." 

"  But  suppose,  after  our  losses  on  her 
past,  we  spend  the  profits  on  this  and 
then  she  goes  oft' to  somebody  else?" 

"  She  won't,"  said  the  publisher  confi- 
dently. "She  's  the  sort  that  sees  and  ap- 
preciates —  that  stands  by  her  friends." 

With  her  next  book,  this  author  en- 


PUBLISHER  AND   AUTHOR 

tered  the  hundred-thousand  class,  and 
she  remains  with  her  publisher  still, 
though  the  target  of  many  offers.  It  is  an 
example  of  publishing  relations  in  their 
highest  class. 

If  I  should  tell  you  that  your  favorite 
novelist  has  to  write  short  stories,  and 
sell  at  least  one  a  month  to  the  maga- 
zines in  order  to  average  thirty-five  hun- 
dred dollars  a  year,  you  would  be  sur- 
prised. There  are  not  many  who  do  so 
well  as  that,  year  in,  year  out,  notwith- 
standing an  occasional  lucrative  hit.  Oc- 
casional serialization  adds  several  thou- 
sand. And  yet  your  novelist  will  make 
two  or  three  times  out  of  a  book  what 
his  publisher  does;  and  man}^,  many 
times  his  publisher  actually  loses  money. 

So  Grub  Street  needs  its  compensa- 
tions! 

Once  I  asked  Charles  Scribner  to  de- 
fine publishing. 

"Can  you  call  it  a  business?"  I  de- 
manded. 

179 


THE   PUBLISHER 

"Yes,"  he  said  doubtfully;  "but  that 
doesn't  define  it  —  it  is  so  much  more 
than  a  business." 

"Is  it  a  profession,  then?" 

"No;  certainly  not,  but  it  is  certainly 
professional." 

He  thought  a  moment  and  said,  smil- 
ing:— 

"Publishing  is  neither  a  business  nor 
a  profession.  It  is  a  career." 


THE    END 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .  S   .  A 


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